MAKING 
ADVERTISEMENTS 

And  Making  Them  >  *.iy 

By, 

•,    -^ 
*' 

Roy  S.  Djurstine 


^^z- 


Durstine,  Roy  S.  jp<^  j 


Making  Advertisements  and  i^lakin^ 
IT.  era  Pay 


INFORAAATION  CENTER 

J.  V/ ALTER  THOMPSON   CO 

CHICAGO  OFFICE 


IVa-XLA/^-'A^ 


O 


INFORMATION^   CENTER 

I  WALTER  r,ON   CO. 

CHICAGO  Q^>ICE 


MAKING  ADVERTISEMENTS 
AND  MAKING  THEM  PAY 


ADVERTISEMENT- 

To  aD  Gentlemen,  Bookfeners,  and  others. 

At  the  Houfe  v»th  Stcne-Steps  and  Safb-TViadows^ 
in  Hanover-Q)urr,  in  Grape-Screcr,  nmlgarlj 
talPd  Crub-Strect> 

Livcth  an  AUTHOR, 

TITH  O  Writcth  all  manner  of  Books  and  Pam- 
^^  phlets,  in  VeHc  or  Profe,  at  Reafonablo 
Rates:  And  furnifhetbi  at  a  Minute*s  Warning, 
any  CuQomer  with  Elegies,  Pailorals,  Bpitbalami- 
urns,  and  Congratulatory  Verfes  adapted  to  all  man* 
ncr  of  Feribns  and  ProfeiSons,  readv  written,  with 
Blanks  to  infert  the  Names  of  the  Parties  Ad* 
drefs'd  to. 

He  fupplieth  Gentlemen  Bell-JNlen  with  Verfes 
on  all  Occa£on$,  at  iid,  the  Dozen,  or  io5.  the 
Crofs)  and  teacheth  them  Accent  and  Prononcia* 
tion  gratis. 

He  taketh  any  £de  of  a  Quedion,  and  wrlteth 
(or  or  againfl,  or  both,  if  required. 

He  likewifb  draws  up  Advertifements,  and  af* 
perfes  after  the  neweft  Method. 

Hewriteth  for  thofewho  cannot  write  themtelves, 
yet  are  ambitious  of  being  Authors  ^  and  will,  if 
required,  enter  into  Bonds  never  to  own  the  Per* 
fbrmance. 

He  tranfmogriHeth^  aUa$  tranimigrapheth  any 
Copy^  and  tnaketh  many  Titles  to  one  Work» 
a6er  the  manner  of  the  famous  Mr.  iS— —  C— ^— 

K*B.  Hc.is  ccme down  from  the Gamt  to  the  firfi 
Floor ^  for  the  Conveniettee  of  bis  Cufiomers* 

f^  ^ay  tmjhake  not  theHoufe  5  Ucaufeihert^aFe 
mat^  Pretenders  tberdahouts. 

No  Truft  by  Retake 

Was  hf  the  first  advertising  agent  ? 


MAKING 
ADVERTISEMENTS 

And  Making  Them  Pay 


«> 


Roy  S.  Durstine 


^ 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 

1920 


Copyright,   1920,  by 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


Published  September,  1920 
Reprinted  November,  1920 


THE  SCRIBNER  PRE89 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Making  an  Advertisement         .        .        .        .  i 

II.  Which  Comes  First  —  Copy  or  Illustration?  17 

III.  Getting  Out  of  the  Rut 37 

IV.  Atmosphere  .        .        .      • 65 

V.     Sincerity 87 

VI.     Common  Sense 117 

VII.  The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     .        .131 

VIII.     Lifting  Dead  Weight 155 

IX.  The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place      .        .  175 

X.    The  Campaign 197 

XL  Ideas  on  Idea  Advertising         ....  219 

XII.  Where  Is  Advertising  Going?  ....  235 


MAKING   AN   ADVERTISEMENT 


I 

MAKING   AN    ADVERTISEMENT 

Advertising  came  into  the  world  because 
men  were  too  impatient  to  wait  for  Mrs.  Jones  to 
tell  Mrs.  Smith  that  Brown's  pickles  were  good 
to  eat.  Brown  discovered  that  he  could  tell  two 
million  Mrs.  Smiths  and  Mrs.  Joneses  about  his 
pickles  and  that  he  could  sell  a  lot  more  pickles 
that  way  than  by  waiting  for  the  news  to  leak 
out  by  itself. 

''  But,"  said  Brown's  partner,  "  I  believe  in 
word-of-mouth  advertising." 

"  So  do  I,"  agreed  Brown.     "  But  it  takes  too 

long." 

"  What  I  mean  is  this,"  his  partner  went  on. 
"  If  Mrs.  Jones  tells  Mrs.  Brown,  she'll  believe 
it.  If  we  tell  her,  she'll  think  we  are  trying  to 
put  something  over." 

"That  depends  on  how  we  tell  her,"  said 
Brown. 

"Well,"  said  his  partner  doubtfully,  ''we 
might  get  my  nephew  to  write  some  advertise- 


Making  Advertisements 


ments  for  us.  He's  a  clever  boy.  He  used  to 
write  squibs  for  the  high  school  paper." 

"  But  what  makes  you  think  he  can  write  ad- 
vertisements? '' 

*'  He's  no  good  at  anything  else." 

*' Say,  listen!"  Brown  exclaimed.  '' There's 
more  in  this  business  of  advertising  than  you 
think." 

''  Shucks!  Stringing  sentences  together  and 
maybe  finding  somebody  to  draw  a  picture." 

^'  How  do  you  suppose  the  pickle  business 
looks  from  the  outside?  Putting  young  cucum- 
bers together  in  a  glass  jar  and  finding  somebody 
to  buy  them!  " 

'^  Oh,  that's  different,"  declared  his  partner. 

"  So  is  advertising!  I'm  going  to  find  some- 
body who  knows  as  much  about  making  adver- 
tisements as  we  know  about  making  pickles. 
And  then  I'm  going  to  get  him  to  tell  Mrs. 
Smith  about  our  pickles  so  naturally  that  she 
will  think  Mrs.  Jones  is  doing  the  talking.  I'm 
sick  of  waiting.  These  talks  over  the  back  fence 
are  all  very  well,  but  Mrs.  Jones  and  Mrs.  Smith 
are  too  busy  these  days  to  devote  much  time  to 
gossiping  about  our  pickles.  And,  besides, 
there  are  too  blamed  many  back  fences! " 


Making  an  Advertisement 


To  judge  by  the  looks  of  the  magazines  and 
newspapers,  there  must  have  been  conversations 
of  this  sort  in  a  great  many  factories  in  the  past 
ten  years. 

Never  was  there  a  year  in  which  so  many 
people  have  said,  ^'  Oh,  are  you  in  the  advertis- 
ing business  ?     That  must  be  fascinating  work !  " 

Bright-eyed  young  men  and  women  come  into 
advertising  agencies  with  letters  of  introduction 
and  say  they  want  to  go  into  advertising.  Some- 
times they  want  to  work  for  nothing  —  ^'  just  to 
get  started."  Usually  they  call  it  a  game  — 
which  it  isn't. 

When  you  ask  why  they  have  selected  the  ad- 
vertising business,  they  usually  have  one  or  both 
of  two  reasons.  First,  it  must  be  very  interest- 
ing. They  always  have  been  students  of  adver- 
tising and  they  have  written  lots  of  advertise- 
ments themselves  —  just  to  compare  with  the 
ones  in  the  magazines;  the  inference  being  that 
they  liked  their  own  much  better. 

Second,  they  understand  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  money  in  advertising.  When  they  are  re- 
minded that  there  is  also  a  great  deal  of  money 
in  engineering  and  insurance  and  medicine  and 
store-keeping  and  any  other  business  or  profes- 


Making  Advertisements 


sion  in  which  a  person  gets  a  thorough  training 
and  works  hard,  then  it  appears  that  the  re- 
wards in  advertising  apparently  come  more 
swiftly  and  with  less  effort. 

More  swiftly,  perhaps.  For,  unfortunately  the 
time  has  not  yet  arrived  when  a  regular  course 
in  college  is  assumed  to  be  preliminary  to  ad- 
vertising as  it  is  to  medicine,  the  law  and  the 
ministry,  and  as  it  is  coming  to  be  to  architecture 
and  accounting.  There  are  already  a  number 
of  courses  in  advertising,  ranking  high  in  edu- 
cational value,  but  too  few  aspirants  take  ad- 
vantage of  them.  They  prefer  to  go  into  adver- 
tising through  the  employees'  entrance  of  an 
agency  or  of  a  manufacturer's  advertising  de- 
partment. And  though  the  entrance  may  be 
swift,  progress  is  often  too  slow  for  lack  of  a 
grasp  of  what  the  business  is  all  about. 

But,  however  swiftly  rewards  may  come,  they 
do  not  arrive  without  effort.  And  if  there  is 
any  purpose  in  this  book  it  is  merely  to  give  some 
idea  of  what  happens  in  advertising  beside 
"  stringing  sentences  together  and  finding  some- 
body to  draw  a  picture." 

It  is  easy  to  understand  the  increased  interest 
in  advertising  in  the  past  few  years.     Never  was 


leivs 

JVHAT  is  news? 

Some  think  news  is  just  infor- 
mation about  the  outside  worlcL 

But  advertising,  too,  is  news. 

It  is  information  that  may  be 
of  personal  moment. 

A  paper  without  advertising 
is  but  half  a  newspaper. 

Marshall  Field  8C  Company 
advertisements  bear  the  value  of 
news. 

MARSHALL  FIEID 
&  COMPANY 


//  you  don't  believe  that  people  regard  advertising  as  news,  watch  your 
wife  read  next  Sunday'' s  newspapers.  The  merchants  of  the  country  have 
come  to  realize  that  they  must  make  their  advertising  as  truthful  and  as  in- 
teresting as  any  other  part  of  the  paper.     For  it  is  business  news. 


8  Making  Advertisements 

there  a  time  when  advertising  has  advertised 
advertising  so  effectively.  The  very  volume  of 
it  has  been  insistent  and  impressive.  People 
who  never  have  spoken  about  it,  who  perhaps 
have  not  been  conscious  of  advertising  ever  be- 
fore in  their  lives,  are  commenting  on  the  amount 
of  advertising  that  comes  to  them  with  their 
reading  matter.  Today  more  and  more  people 
are  admitting,  though  sometimes  still  reluc- 
tantly, that  advertising  has  changed  their  habits. 

A  few  years  ago  it  was  common  to  hear  a  man 
boast  that  advertising  had  never  sold  him  any- 
thing. Inquiry  probably  would  have  developed 
that  he  was  awakened  by  a  Big  Ben,  shaved  him- 
self with  a  Gillette,  brushed  his  teeth  with  a  Pro- 
phylactic tooth  brush,  put  on  his  B.  V.  D.'s,  his 
Holeproofs,  Regal  shoes,  E.  &  W.  collar  and  Ar- 
row shirt,  and  had  Kellogg's  corn  flakes.  Beech- 
nut bacon,  and  Yuban  coffee  sweetened  with 
Domino  sugar,  for  breakfast.  And  then  —  but 
why  pursue  him  further  on  his  trade-marked 
way?  Of  course  advertising  never  sold  him  any- 
thing! 

The  only  man  who  can  say  that  advertising 
doesn't  sell  him  anything  these  days  is  one  who 
shuts  himself  up  in  a  cage  in  the  heart  of  an 


Making  an  Advertisement 


African  jungle.  And  even  he  would  probably 
find  that  most  of  his  camping  supplies  were  ad- 
vertised products. 

Advertising's  part  in  the  war  has  had  much  to 
do  with  the  increased  interest  in  it.  People 
could  look  around  them  and  see  how  they  and 
their  friends  were  eating  less  and  saving  more, 
changing  their  habits  of  working,  buying,  dress- 
ing, living  and  even  thinking,  all  because  of  ad- 
vertising. They  became  intimately  acquainted 
with  nations  whose  names  weren't  in  the  old 
geographies.  America's  provincialism  was 
broken  down. 

At  least  three  other  factors,  comparatively 
slight  in  themselves,  perhaps,  but  forceful,  have 
had  a  part  in  bringing  advertising  forward. 
Artists  whose  names  are  widely  known  as  illus- 
trators of  stories  and  originators  of  magazine 
covers  have  been  put  to  work  by  advertisers  al- 
ways seeking  to  improve  their  advertisements. 
People  have  recognized  their  work  and  have 
commented  upon  it.     That  has  been  a  factor. 

Then,  advertising  representatives  have  cov- 
ered the  field  of  manufactured  products  so  inten- 
sively in  the  past  few  years  that  a  very  large 
number  of  business  men  have  heard  the  story  of 


lo  Making  Advertisements 

advertising  applied  to  their  own  businesses,  at 
first  hand. 

And  a  third  factor,  perhaps,  has  been  the 
greater  amount  of  advertising  about  advertising 
—  campaigns  in  the  leading  newspapers  by 
agencies  who  believe  in  it  so  much  that  they  take 
their  own  medicine,  and  such  broad-gauged,  far- 
sighted  campaigns  as  the  publishers  have  spon- 
sored. 

But  of  course  the  greatest  reason  has  been 
simply  this:  Industry  has  faced  the  problem  of 
getting  back  to  a  peace  basis  as  rapidly  and  eco- 
nomically as  possible.  Merchandise  has  been 
produced  in  greater  volume  than  was  ever 
dreamed.  As  a  nation  we  have  set  for  our- 
selves new  standards  of  volume  and  quality  in 
production.  Trade  channels  half  filled  by 
the  silt  of  war  had  to  be  dredged  for  the  naviga- 
tion of  business.  Advertising  was  the  steam 
shovel. 

Many  trade-marks  w^ere  kept  before  the  pub- 
lic even  when  their  owners  had  nothing  to  sell  in 
wartime,  and  now  the  keen  judgment  of  those 
who  regarded  advertising  as  insurance  is  being 
rewarded.  But  a  greater  number  were  allowed 
to  drop  out  of  sight.     Dealers  took  up  other 


Where  the  word 
''Victrola"  came  from 


The  tvofd  **\^ctrola**  was  msde  vtp  by  cotn* 
bining  a  portion  of  the  word  Victor  yvish  a 
portion  of  the  word  **viola*\ 

It  was  originated  and  trade-marked  for  the 
specific  purpose  of  distinguishing  products  of 
the  Victor  Talking  Machine  Company. 

The  word  **Victrola"  is  a  trade-mark  fully 
protected  by  registration  in  the  United  States 
Patent  Office.  Its  use  or  application  to  other 
than  Victor  products  is  not  only  misleading^ 
but  it  is  against  the  law* 


VICTROLA 


■CO.  u. ».  r»i.  or*. 


._   VlcaobXva,«j» 
Vleagb  xvn.  tteoite  MU 


Victor  Talking  Machine  Company 

Camden,  New  Jetsey 


The  word  Victrola  is  a  name  which  the  powerful  advertising  of  F.  Wallis 
Armstrong  has  made  invulnerable. 


12  Making  Advertisements 


lines.  And  the  rush  back  to  the  good  will  of  the 
trade  and  the  public  has  been  inevitable  and  the 
shortest  cut  has  been  —  as  it  always  will  be  — 
through  advertising. 

The  man  who  makes  a  reliable  product,  who 
has  an  adequate  sales  force  capable  of  putting 
his  merchandise  into  the  hands  of  dealers  every- 
where —  such  a  man  knows  that  his  sale  is  not 
completed  until  he  has  made  room  on  the  retail 
merchants'  shelves  for  more  merchandise  from 
the  factory. 

Eventually  the  public  will  buy  a  good  product 
even  without  advertising.  But  most  American 
business  men  are  not  content  to  wait.  They  pre- 
fer to  invest  their  own  money  in  telling  the  pub- 
lic why  their  merchandise  is  good.  They  know 
that  if  they  tell  their  story  simply,  truthfully, 
naturally,  they  will  do  a  much  greater  volume  of 
business  than  they  would  if  they  kept  quiet. 
And  they  know  that  their  printed  messages  to 
the  public  are  the  most  important  phase  of  their 
public  relations. 

For  no  matter  how  smoothly  their  channels 
of  distribution  may  be  arranged,  no  matter  how 
attractive  their  sales  policy  may  be  to  retail 
merchants,  if  the  public  isn't  interested  and  con- 


Making  an  Advertisement  13 

vinced  by  their  advertisements,  their  advertising 
falls  short. 

These  are  the  really  significant  reasons  for  the 
increased  volume  of  advertising.  But  there  is 
another  cause  which  has  received  attention  out 
of  all  proportion  to  its  actual  importance,  par- 
ticularly from  people  who  pride  themselves  on 
their  own  astuteness  and  are  always  quick  to  be- 
lieve that  somebody  is  trying  to  put  something 
over.  That  is  the  idea  that  the  gain  is  caused  by 
the  excess  profits  tax;  that  an  advertiser  prefers 
to  put  into  advertising  a  great  share  of  what  he 
would  otherwise  have  to  pay  in  taxes. 

No  doubt  there  are  advertisers  who  have  been 
impelled  by  this  motive,  just  as  there  are  prob- 
ably advertisers  who  have  lavished  unnecessary 
improvements  upon  their  plants  simply  to  get  a 
run  for  their  money. 

But  to  say  that  the  increase  in  advertising  is 
caused  by  the  tax  alone  is  as  absurd  as  it  is  un- 
just to  the  advertising  business.  The  advertis- 
ing man  who  would  urge  the  tax  as  a  reason  for 
advertising  would  be  in  the  position  of  the  un- 
dertaker who  urged  a  friend  to  smoke  himself 
to  death  in  order  to  collect  enough  coupons  to 
get  a  coffin. 


14  Making  Advertisements 


No  doubt  there  will  soon  be  advertisers  who, 
either  through  their  own  mistaken  ideas  of  econ- 
omy or  through  unwise  advice,  will  presently 
emerge  from  a  headlong  advertising  campaign 
only  to  discover  that  advertising  does  not  pay. 
They  will  be  the  ones  who  spent  money  for  ad- 
vertising without  regard  for  the  proper  safe- 
guards of  production,  distribution  and  market- 
ing methods. 

Yet  even  these  advertisers  will  probably  be 
forced  to  admit  that  even  their  extravagant  and 
ungoverned  way  of  advertising  has  left  for  them 
a  residue  of  good  will  and  enhanced  respect 
which  they  have  never  felt  before.  And  a  cer- 
tain number  of  these  plungers  will  take  a  lesson 
from  their  experience;  they  will  say  to  them- 
selves that  if  such  senseless  advertising  as  they 
have  used  can  prove  its  value,  there  must  be  some- 
thing in  it  after  all  —  something  which  they  never 
suspected  when  they  decided  to  have  their  fling 
and  let  the  publisher  pay  the  piper.  In  these 
cases,  the  net  of  an  advertising  debauch  will  be  the 
creation  of  a  few  rational  advertisers,  after  all. 

There  will  be  another  worth  while  effect,  too. 
Suppose,  in  a  certain  line  of  business,  only  one 
manufacturer  takes  the  spendthrift  attitude  to- 


Making  an  Advertisement  15 

ward  advertising.  When  his  competitors  see 
that  his  advertising  appropriation  is  suddenly 
expanding,  they  too  will  be  apt  to  put  on  added 
pressure. 

But  not  being  the  spendthrift  type,  they  will 
increase  more  cautiously  and  with  better  judge- 
ment. So  the  effect  will  be  that  their  advertising 
development  will  be  quickened  and  they  will  be 
much  further  along  the  road  to  success  than  they 
would  have  been  if  their  joy-riding  competitor 
had  not  administered  an  artificial  stimulus. 

At  its  worst,  therefore,  this  tax  phase  of  adver- 
tising will  unquestionably  create  many  sound 
new  advertisers  who  never  would  have  known 
advertising's  advantages  if  it  had  not  been  for 
this  rapid  though  questionable  introduction  to  it. 

But  it  should  be  remembered  that  this  whole 
discussion  of  the  relation  of  the  tax  to  advertis- 
ing is  almost  entirely  confined  to  the  amateur 
advertiser  and  to  those  who  are  entirely  unac- 
quainted with  the  advertising  business.  Among 
ethical  advertising  men  who  are  looking  at  busi- 
ness in  terms  of  the  future  and  at  advertising  as 
a  constructive  force,  nothing  could  be  more  sui- 
cidal than  recommending  the  unrestrained  ex- 
penditure of  large  sums  which  could  not  pos- 


1 6  Making  Advertisements 

sibly  show  a  proper  return.  No  matter  what 
the  original  incentive,  whether  it  is  saving 
money  or  making  sales  or  making  good  will, 
when  his  advertising  appropriation  is  once  spent 
an  advertiser  invariably  looks  around  him  and 
asks,  "  What  did  I  get  for  my  money?  '^  And 
he  is  entitled  to  know  and  to  have  something  to 
see. 

Realizing  this  and  appreciating,  too,  that  the 
unwise  spending  of  money  under  any  pretext  is 
opposed  to  the  permanent  good  of  advertising, 
the  farsighted  men  of  the  business  have  consist- 
ently refused  to  help  the  tax-evader  and  have 
discouraged  his  destructive  plans  wherever  op- 
portunity ofiFered. 


II 

WHICH    COMES    FIRST  — COPY 
OR   ILLUSTRATION? 


II 

WHICH    COMES    FIRST  — COPY 
OR    ILLUSTRATION? 

When  you  see  an  advertisement  in  a  magazine 
or  newspaper,  you  see  a  finished  product — like 
a  building  or  a  play.  The  better  it  is,  the  less  it 
shows  the  preliminary  steps  involved  in  makingit. 

You  have  seen  buildings  which  seemed  to  cry 
out  that  their  builders  changed  their  minds  a 
dozen  times  in  the  course  of  construction.  You 
have  watched  plays  where  the  mechanism 
creaked  so  audibly  that  one  of  the  characters 
might  as  well  have  said :  ^'  I  know  I'm  acting  con- 
trary to  all  human  standards,  but  the  author  can 
unravel  the  plot  in  no  other  way." 

Similarly  you  have  seen  advertisements  in 
which  the  picture,  type  and  copy  should  have 
been  granted  an  absolute  divorce  on  the  grounds 
of  incompatibility. 

As  you  go  along  the  streets  of  a  strange  city 
you  find  yourself  looking  twice  at  certain  build- 
ings.    After  a  winter's  theatre-going  you  look 

19 


WIRE 

The  nation's  business  is  transacted  over  millions  of  miles  of  wire.  Th« 
New  Jersey  Zinc  Company  plays  its  part  in  maintaining  this  won- 
derful equipment,  for  it  is  New  Jersey  Zinc  that  protects  these  wires 
from  rusting  and  breaking  and  prevents  a  prohibitive  replacement  cost. 

This  Zinc,  (commercially  called  spelter),  is  but  one  of  this  com- 
pany's many  products.  All  are  vitally  essential  to  many  of  the 
nation's  greatest  industries. 

The  New  Jersey  Zinc  Company  by  reason  of  the  location  of  its  zinc 
deposits,  the  quality  of  its  ore,  the  modem  equipment  of  its  many 
plants,  and  the  extent  of  its  resources,  can  be  depended  upon  for  ex- 
ceptional service  and  unvarying  quality  in  every  one  of  its  products. 

THE  NEW  JERSrV  ZINC  COMPANY,  SS  IfailSna,  Hem  YoA 

CSTABUSHEO  1(41 

CHiCACOi  UlaodrdM  Zta>C<«pu]r,  till  Mu^MItt  BaUdlaf 

tiinftatnr,  «/  Z<V  OtUi.  Sflur.  StUpUwi,  Lui^fmi,  Suf^iarn  jUA 

ZJm  Sri^  <W  Pbut,  Zm  Dti  imJ  Znu  CkUriJt 

Tkt  »orU't  tlanJard  for  Zincfitvdaett 


. 


few  Jersey^ 

zinc 


Zinc  is  a  thing  which  the  public  never  buys  —  consciously.  Yet  by  selling 
the  use  of  zinc  in  wire  and  paint  and  other  finished  products,  a  new  appre- 
ciation of  this  metal  has  been  built  up  by  Calkins  i^  Holden  for  the  New 
Jersey  Zinc  Company.  This  is  the  highest  type  of  ^'institutional"  adver- 
tising. Compare  it  to  the  old  kind  which  attempted  to  create  an  impression 
of  stability  and  size  by  showing  the  chimneys  of  the  plant  and  the  whiskers 
of  the  founder. 


First,  Copy  or  Illustration  ?  21 

back  at  certain  plays  with  a  wistful  impression 
that  you  would  like  to  see  them  again.  You 
might  find  it  difficult  to  explain  just  why.  But 
occasionally  you  see  a  play  or  a  building  or  an 
advertisement  which  is  so  well  proportioned,  so 
satisfying  in  design  and  mood  and  technique,  so 
right  in  its  completeness  as  a  unit,  that  it  fills 
your  eye  and  warms  your  heart. 

Clearly,  since  these  are  the  objects  of  all  ad- 
vertisements, it  may  be  useful  to  speculate  over 
the  ways  that  this  unity  can  be  obtained. 

After  the  fire  of  London,  when  the  task  of  re- 
building confronted  the  city,  some  one  had  the 
happy  idea  of  permitting  Sir  Christopher  Wren 
to  take  command  of  the  situation.  And  even 
though  not  all  of  his  plans  were  carried  out,  Lon- 
don is  a  unit  as  compared  with,  say,  the 
cloak-and-suit  school  of  architecture  in  the 
cross-streets  of  Manhattan  just  south  of  Fortieth 
and  north  of  Twenty-third. 

If  one  person  can  visualize  an  advertisement 
before  a  line  of  copy  is  written  or  drawn,  a 
mighty  step  toward  unity  has  been  taken. 

Many  careful  workmen  among  advertising 
men  find  that  they  get  the  best  results  if  they  can 
follow  this  course: 


PREFEERED  EY  GENTLEMEN   NOW  AS  THEN 


'  ■■■■•■-■-"-■BaBP'WB-" 

"  ...  In  those  days  it  ioas  no  uncommon  sight  to  see  the  Statesmen,  dur- 
ing a  recess,  discussing  Ways  and  Means  over  their  Virginia  cigarettes," 

These  famous  cigarettes  liave  always  been  in  demand.  And  fortunately 
for  you,  they're  not  imported.  Their  good  Virginia  tobacco  is  grown  right 
here — it  pays  no  import  duty  —all  the  value  in  "^Richmond  Straight  Cuts" 
is  in  the  cigarette,  where  it  should  be.  If  you  don't  know  the  old-time  deli- 
cacy of  good  Virginia  tobacco— you  should  try  "Richmond  Straight  Cots.** 

Richmord  StraightGit 

CIGARETTES  Tlain^CorkOh 

In  Neat  Boxes — Fifteen  Cents 

Also  in  attractive  tinSt  SO  for  40  cents;  100  for  7S 
cents*  Sent  prepaid  if  cf  our  dealer  caMnot  supply  you. 


K^Ufiv^*^iM^ 


IIICflMOMb,V)«MinUUA. 

WKTunsnutac 


Every  element  in  this  series  was  in  character  —  copy,  illustration,  type 
and  border.  Even  the  captions  carried  out  th^  quaintness  of  the  whole  effect. 
Courtland  N.  Smith,  now  of  Joseph  Richards  Co.,  Inc.,  put  thought  into 
this  series  —  and  it  was  worth  it. 


First,  Copy  or  Illustration?  23 


After  they  have  their  material  in  hand,  after 
the  purpose  of  the  advertisement  has  been  settled, 
they  carry  the  idea  of  it  around  in  their  minds  for 
a  few  days  without  trying  to  crystallize  it  into 
a  definite  advertisement.  Little  by  little  it  be- 
gins to  take  shape.  Perhaps  the  headline  comes 
first — a  short  line  or  a  whole  sentence.  Then 
the  spirit  of  the  whole  advertisement,  the  at- 
mosphere of  it,  gradually  visualizes  itself  —  a 
strong,  vigorous  treatment  or  a  clean-cut,  com- 
paratively light  appearance. 

Several  arrangements  suggest  themselves  im- 
mediately if  the  visualizer  has  a  natural  or  a 
trained  imagination.  Usually  a  conscientious 
person  isn't  satisfied  to  stop  at  the  first  ideas  that 
occur  to  him. 

At  this  stage,  still  before  anything  has  been 
written,  it  is  often  useful  to  sit  down  with  pencil 
and  paper  and  play  with  ideas.  Even  though  he 
may  not  be  able  to  draw  at  all,  he  can  make  min- 
iature designs  of  pages  which  will  convey,  at 
least  to  himself,  an  idea  of  how  several  possibil- 
ities would  work  out. 

By  this  time  his  plans  begin  to  narrow  down. 
He  begins  to  see  roughly  how  his  advertisement 
will  look.     A  definite  conception  of  the  layout 


Richmond  StraightGit 

CICiARETTES  "Plaint Cork Ot^ 


even  th»  tophomores  treated  in«  wiith  tome  respect  uititn  J  pr^ 
due«d  the  V  irginia  eiforattet  uhich  I'd  brought  upfront  Richmond.' 

That  fine  old  Southern  Aristocrat — "Richmond 
Straight  Cuts."  There's  never  been  another  cigarette 
quite  like  them.  Their  "bright"  Virginia  tobacco 
has  a  naturally  refreshing  flavor  that  makes  even  the 
best  of  Turkish  cigarettes  taste  almost  tame  and  character- 
less by  contrast.    You'll  wish  you'd  tried  them  before. 

Also  packc<l  in  attractive  tins,  50  for  40 
cents:  100  for  75  cents.  Sent  prepaid 
if    your   dealer   cannot   supply    you. 

HOTE:  Umtikt  TmrUsh  tobaen.  Vireimia  maceo 
paj$  «e  Import  duty  — all  the  value  iu  Richmond 
Straigkt  Cut  dgarettes  U  im  tkeir  choic*  Vireimia 
tobocct. 

TREFERRED  Iij/  GENTLEMEN  NOW  as  THEN 


The  picture  belongs  with  the  copy  and  the  copy  belongs  with  the  type  and 
all  three  belong  to  the  product  in  these  advertisements.  Mr.  Smith  caught 
the  spirit  of  the  cigarettes  and  the  advertiser  had  thf  good  sense  to  let  him 
express  it. 


First,  Copy  or  Illustration  ?  25 

is  in  his  mind.  Names  of  artists  and  recollec- 
tions of  their  work  will  begin  to  occur  to  him. 
He  will  see  just  about  how  much  he  can  write  — 
whether  he  can  develop  his  argument  fully  or 
must  remember  to  hit  out  with  short,  strong 
sentences. 

Some  men's  minds  work  in  terms  of  layouts, 
some  only  in  terms  of  copy  —  and  some  appar- 
ently do  not  work  at  all.  But  if  the  combina- 
tion of  layout  and  copy  can  progress  together  in 
this  way  the  result  will  have  a  much  greater 
chance  of  being  a  unit. 

There  is  a  famous  magazine  illustrator  who 
laughs  because  people  often  ask  him  which 
come  first  —  his  pictures  or  the  stories  they  il- 
lustrate. He  patiently  explains  that  there  can't 
be  any  illustrations  until  there  is  something  to 
illustrate.  By  the  same  token  there  can't  be  a 
picture  for  an  advertisement  until  there  is  an 
advertisement  that  needs  a  picture. 

The  disadvantages  of  having  the  advertise- 
ment originate  with  a  man  who  only  writes  copy 
or  with  a  man  who  only  makes  layouts  are  man- 
ifest. And  yet  when  you  glance  through  the 
advertising  pages  you  see  that  many  advertise- 
ments are  made  in  this  one-handed  way.     That 


26  Making  Advertisements 

is  one  reason  that  many  of  them  have  a  splendid 
illustration,  a  good  display  of  the  name  and 
trade-mark  and  about  six  times  as  much  copy 
as  anybody  will  read. 

An  art  director  has  made  a  layout.  In  his  de- 
sign he  has  inserted  a  small  block  of  horizontal 
lines  on  which  he  has  lettered  "  Copy  Here.'^ 
Off  in  the  other  end  of  the  office  a  copy  man  has 
received  a  requisition  for  seven  or  twelve  ad- 
vertisements. He  has  written  them  to  suit  his 
arguments.  And  then  some  poor  typographer 
has  to  try  to  squeeze  a  three-hundred  word  prose- 
poem  into  a  3  X  2  space.  Perhaps  he  may  have 
the  hardihood  to  send  it  back  with  a  polite  re- 
quest to  cut  about  half  of  the  copy.  Then  the 
copy  man  either  jumps  up  and  down,  and  kicks 
the  waste  basket,  or  sends  it  back  to  be  set  in  8- 
point  type,  depending  on  the  relative  impor- 
tance of  the  copy  man  and  the  type  man. 

Or,  a  copy  man  has  worked  out  a  series  of  ad- 
vertisements, thinking  only  of  his  arguments  and 
caring  not  at  all  about  the  layout.  Eventually 
they  arrive  on  the  art  director's  desk  crying  to 
be  illustrated.  Perhaps  they  do  not  offer  the 
slightest  basis  for  illustration.  He  sees  this  at 
once,  but  he  knows  that  if  he  says  so,  the  copy 


First,  Copy  or  Illustration  ?  27 

man  is  very  likely  to  ask  him  where  he  ever  got 
the  idea  that  he  knew  anything  about  copy.  So 
he  falls  back  on  the  time-tried  expedient  of  hav- 
ing Mrs.  Housewife  saying  something  to  Mr. 
Dealer. 

And  in  either  case  the  typographer  stands  be- 
tween two  fires,  vainly  wishing  that  type  were 
made  of  rubber  instead  of  hard,  remorseless 
metal. 

Even  if  a  maker  of  advertisements  finds  by  ex- 
perience that  either  the  copy  or  layout  side  of 
his  brain  sags  too  much  to  permit  his  imagina- 
tion to  progress  along  parallel  lines,  at  least  he 
can  call  for  help  before  it  is  too  late.  He  can 
talk  things  over  with  a  man  who  thinks  in  terms 
of  layouts  if  his  own  mind  runs  to  copy.  He 
can  ask  his  typographer  how  many  words  of  a 
certain  size  type  will  comfortably  fit  into  a 
given  space.  And  then  when  the  advertisement  is 
complete  its  parts  will  look  as  if  they  were  meant 
to  belong  together  instead  of  being  coerced  by  a 
perspiring  compositor  with  strong  wrists. 

All  this  is  not  for  purposes  of  art  for  art's 
sake.  That,  of  course,  is  an  excellent  idea,  for 
any  conscientious  workman  prefers  to  do  a  work- 
manlike piece  of  work  rather  than  a  slovenly  job- 


28  Making  Advertisements 

But  the  primary  object  of  this  unity  is  to  make 
the  advertisement  pay. 

A  well-proportioned,  carefully-made  adver- 
tisement pays  better  than  a  crowded,  carelessly 
made  advertisement  just  as  a  good  piece  of  archi- 
tecture appeals  to  ignorant  and  educated  alike, 
just  as  a  good  play  succeeds  because  it  is  well 
done. 

This  does  not  mean  the  meticulousness  that 
seeks  merely  to  produce  a  choice  design.  Some 
of  the  most  exquisite  pieces  of  type  arrangement 
and  design  —  exquisite  as  designs  —  will  abso- 
lutely defy  the  most  persistent  efforts  to  read 
them.  Those  who  feel  or  affect  abandoned 
pleasure  in  viewing  specimens  of  this  work  may 
gather  around  and  sigh,  if  they  will,  like  the 
disciples  of  the  latest  freak  among  painters.  But 
next  year  there  will  be  a  new  freak,  and  the  type 
design  made  purely  for  its  own  sake  does  not 
come  under  the  head  of  advertising. 

Like  everything  else  designed  to  be  read,  an 
advertisement  is  an  intrusion.  "  You  have  been 
told,  I  daresay  often  enough,"  says  Sir  Arthur 
Quiller-Couch,  "  that  the  business  of  writing  de- 
mands two  — the  author  and  the  reader.  Add 
to  this  what  is  equally  obvious,  that  the  obliga- 


9^e  World  and  His  Wife 


The  World  is  hard  to  please— even  harder  tlian 
his  wife.  There  are  many  things  fashioned  to 
gladden  the  heart  of  woman.  Her  clothes,  her 
jewelry,  all  her  personal  possessions  may  be  jnst 
as  foO  of  life  and  color  as  she  desires. 

The  World  does  not  fare  so  well.  Each  genera* 
tion  has  decreed  that  his  clothing  must  be  in> 
creasingly  sombre.  His  tastes,  too,  are  more  sim- 
ple and  his  concrete  wants  are  fewer.  Display  of 
any  sort,  is  not  considered  **good  form.** 

So  when  it  comes  to  choosing  a  gift  for  the 
World,  it  is  necessary  to  use  much  care.  Let  us 
help  you  with  this  gift  problem.  We  have  given 
a  great  deal  of  study  to  things  we  offer  as  suit- 
able gifts  for  father,  brother,  and  husband. 

We  have  pipes,  cigarette  cases,  and  humidors 
for  the  smoker.  Our  sets  of  studs  and  sleeve  links 
are  full  of  quiet  elegance.  We  have  walking  sticks 
and  umbrellas  imported  from  London.  Watches 
of  all  the  best  American  and  foreign  makes  we 
will  gladly  regtUate  to  keep  perfect  time  for  the 
owner. 


Shreve,  Crump  and  Low  Company 

Waldtes,  Fine  Clocks,  Stationery,  Trazeling  Requisites 

U7  Tremont  Street  Boitoo,  MsssachusetU 


e  :H>,8.C.SL.C: 


Even  the  merchandise  has  been  brought  into  harmony  with  the  copy  and 
the  design  in  this  admirable  advertisement.     By  George  Batten  Co. 


30  Making  Advertisements 

tion  of  courtesy  rests  first  with  the  author,  who 
invites  the  seance,  and  commonly  charges  for  it. 
What  follows,  but  that  in  speaking  or  writing  we 
have  an  obligation  to  put  ourselves  into  the  hear- 
er's or  reader's  place?  It  is  his  comfort,  his 
convenience,  we  have  to  consult.  To  express 
ourselves  is  a  very  small  part  of  the  business; 
very  small  and  almost  unimportant  as  compared 
with  impressing  ourselves,  the  aim  of  the  whole 
process  being  to  persuade. 

^'  All  reading  demands  an  effort.  The  energy,^ 
the  good-w^ill  which  a  reader  brings  to  the  book 
is,  and  must  be,  partly  expended  in  the  labor  of 
reading,  marking,  learning,  inwardly  digesting 
what  the  author  means.  The  more  difficulties, 
then,  we  authors  obtrude  on  him  by  obscure  or 
careless  writing,  the  more  we  blunt  the  edge  of 
his  attention;  so  that  if  only  in  our  own  interest 
—  though  I  had  rather  keep  it  on  the  ground  of 
courtesy  —  we  should  study  to  anticipate  his 
comfort." 

Charging  for  the  seance  is  only  another  way 
of  saying  that  an  advertisement  exists  to  sell 
something.  So  obviously  the  process  of  intrud- 
ing must  be  arranged  as  effectively  as  possible. 
And  in  this  the  two  elements  which  can  help 
most  are  the  picture  and  the  headline. 


First,  Copy  or  Illustration?  31 

Possibly  the  best  rule  to  follow  in  an  illustra- 
tion is  to  be  sure  that  it  tells  a  story.  If  the  ex- 
planation can  be  thrown  away  it  is  a  mighty  good 
picture.  But  sometimes  there  is  unfortunately 
no  story  to  tell  in  the  picture,  if  the  artist  can 
judge  by  the  copy  furnished  to  him.  He  is  then 
in  the  position  of  the  actor  who  was  confronted 
with  carrying  out  that  famous  stage  direction 
in  an  eminent  British  playwright's  drama  —  the 
one  which  says,  ''  Enter  in  the  manner  of  one 
who  has  just  had  a  cup  of  tea.'' 

So  he  does  his  best  to  decorate  the  advertise- 
ment instead  of  illustrating  it.  His  decoration 
may  be  effective,  but  at  best  all  it  can  hope  to 
accomplish  is  to  shout  to  the  public :  '^  Come 
and  read  this!  I  don't  know  what  it's  all 
about,  but  Fm  here  to  catch  your  eye,  so  look  this 
way!  " 

Or  he  may  play  safe  and  draw  that  picture  of 
Mrs.  Housewife  and  Mr.  Dealer,  or  the  crowd 
out  at  the  country  club,  or  the  family  at  dinner,  or 
the  factory  beside  a  winding  river,  or  two  men 
talking  across  a  desk,  or  the  bride  doing  her 
housework,  or  any  other  one  of  the  good  old 
dependable  subjects  that  have  advertised  every- 
thing from  food  to  fashion.     If  a  picture  is 


32  Making  Advertisements 

going  to  tell  a  story,  why  not  have  it  tell  just  one 
story  instead  of  a  whole  news-stand? 

Ordinarily  a  safe  plan  to  follow  in  creating 
interest  by  an  illustration  is  to  show  the  product 
in  action.  The  motor  truck  tire  crunching 
through  the  mud  and  leaving  the  track  of  its 
tread  was  infinitely  more  interesting  than  a  cold 
picture  of  a  tire  floating  in  space  would  have 
been.  If  you  are  selling  aeroplanes,  it 's  ob- 
vious that  a  picture  of  a  plane  leaving  the 
ground,  or  making  a  flight  or  landing,  would 
create  more  interest  than  a  portrait  of  a  station- 
ary plane.  In  the  same  way  it's  more  interest- 
ing to  show  a  suite  of  furniture  in  a  room,  with 
pictures,  hangings  and  ornaments,  than  to  show 
merely  a  table  and  some  chairs.  If  you  are  ad- 
vertising a  newspaper,  show  it  being  read  by 
somebody.  Every  piece  of  merchandise  is  de- 
signed to  fill  a  need.  Show  it  on  the  job  —  in 
action  —  satisfying  the  need  it  comes  to  fill.  It 
simply  means  making  your  product  fit  into  the 
scheme  of  human  events. 

There  is  always  something  exciting  about  a 
piece  of  merchandise  that  lends  itself  to  a  cen- 
tral, individual  idea.  ''  See  that  hump?  "  made 
one  hook-and-eye  stand  out  above  all  others  for 


Symphony  in  B  Q^iet 


Atkfov 
Booklet  and 
Impressive 
List  of  Users 


<77ie 


Some  bright  soul  has  called  the 
typewriter  The  Word  Piano. 

The  beauty  of  the  Noiseless 
Typewriter  is  that  it  does  its  work 
--pianissimo! 

You  may  have  a  full  orchestra  of 
Noiseless  Typewiters  in  your  office 
but  they  never  disturb. 

Quiet  reigns  supreme.  The  irri- 
tating brass-band-jazz  fades  into 
a  lullaby.  To  install  the  Noiseless 
is  like  having  the  hurdy-gurdy 
move  away  from  your  window 
on  a  busy  day. 


NOISELESS 

TYPEWRITER 

The  Noiseless  Typewriter  Company,  253  Broadway,  New  York 
'Phone  ^Barclay  8205 


Business  is  a  serious  subject^  and  for  that  very  reason  the  best  way  to  talk 
about  it  is  with  a  smile.  It's  the  best  way  because  most  people  don't  do  it. 
How  much  more  interesting  is  this  type  of  copy  prepared  by  N.  W.  Ayer  y 
^on  than  the  conventional  '"''Now  listen^  Mr.  Purchasing  Agent!" 


34  Making  Advertisements 

a  generation.  Take  the  revolver  that  can  be 
hammered  without  going  off,  the  table  varnish 
that  thrives  under  a  shower  of  boiling  water,  the 
motor  car  which  has  no  gears  to  shift,  the  soap 
that  lathers  well  in  cold  water,  the  cigarette  that 
won't  bite  and  the  hack-saw  that  will,  the  muci- 
lage that  sticks  and  the  motor-oil  that  doesn't  — 
all  these  have  succeeded  in  getting  themselves 
associated  with  definite,  individual  ideas. 

Then  the  way  is  opened  for  a  good  headline 
which  can  sum  up  the  whole  argument  with  in- 
terest, vividness  and  force.  A  poor  one  can  be 
merely  dull — or  misleading,  like  the  kind 
which  says,  '^  Columbus  discovered  America. 
Have  you  discovered  this  new  oleomargarine?  " 
If  it  fails  to  attract  attention,  or  attracts  it  under 
false  pretenses,  the  headline  might  better  be  left 
out. 

The  making  of  the  advertisement  which  is  to 
appear  before  the  public  is  the  most  important 
thing  in  advertising  because  the  advertisement 
is  usually  the  only  thing  the  public  sees  before  it 
buys,  and  is  always  your  surest  way  of  conveying 
to  your  customers  your  own  idea  of  your  business 
as  you  know  it. 

Take  the  best  trade  investigation  ever  made. 


First,  Copy  or  Illustration?  35 

Take  the  best  window  displays  and  the  most 
carefully  drilled  lot  of  salesmen  on  earth,  set  the 
stage  to  perfection  and  then  tell  the  consumer  a 
dreary,  commonplace  story  and  what  does  he  get 
out  of  it?  A  dreary,  commonplace  story. 
That's  all  he  sees!  You  can't  go  to  him  and  say, 
"  Yes,  but  you  ought  to  see  how  well  we  make 
our  merchandise."  What  does  he  care?  He's 
off  buying  that  other  product  to  which  the  ad- 
vertising attracted  him. 

Make  your  trade  plans  right,  of  course.  Set 
your  house  in  order  with  your  salesmen  and  your 
dealers.  Let  them  all  understand  just  how  you 
plan  to  advertise  and  where  they  fit  in.  But  be- 
fore that  and  after  that  and  all  the  time  in  be- 
tween make  sure  that  your  consumer  copy  is  so 
unified,  so  representative  of  you,  and  so  sincere 
that  it  will  surge  back  at  you  like  a  living  thing. 


Ill 

GETTING    OUT   OF   THE    RUT 


Ill 

GETTING    OUT    OF   THE    RUT 

One  of  the  greatest  shortcomings  of  today's 
advertising  is  its  rubber-stampism.  Too  many 
advertisements  are  so  commonplace  that  almost 
any  name  could  be  signed  to  them.  More  than 
that,  in  most  cases  it  would  not  be  necessary  to 
limit  the  choice  of  signers  to  any  single  line  of 
business. 

"  I  want  my  advertising  to  reflect  my  com- 
pany so  exactly,"  says  the  advertiser,  '^  that  it 
will  fit  my  company  and  no  other." 

And  what  does  he  get?  Advertisements 
which  look  and  sound  so  much  like  other  adver- 
tisements, already  appearing,  that  you  could  re- 
move his  name  and  substitute  his  competitor's 
without  disturbing  the  effect  a  particle.  Yes, 
you  could  even  go  into  another  industry  without 
introducing  a  discordant  note.  Right  here  will 
come  a  protest  from  those  who  spend  their  days 
in  the  service  of  reflecting  other  men's  busi- 
nesses. 

39 


40  Making  Advertisements 


n 


"  That's  all  very  well,"  they  will  exclaim, 
but  when  there  isn't  a  shred  of  individuality 
about  a  business,  what  are  you  going  to  do 
then?" 

Well,  advertising,  despite  its  close  relation  to 
many  kinds  of  business,  is  only  one  business, 
after  all.  And  for  the  purposes  of  this  discussion 
it  is  much  more  feasible  to  speak  of  individuality 
in  advertising  than  to  advance  theories  for  indi- 
vidualities in  all  businesses.  Without  question 
it  would  be  desirable  to  see  every  business  house 
achieve  a  personality  of  its  own.  Most  of  them 
have  one  already  if  the  search  is  carried  deep 
enough.  But  to  suggest  ways  of  accomplishing 
this  would  be  a  reasonably  large  order.  Ifs 
quite  enough,  here  and  now,  to  limit  the  discus- 
sion to  advertising's  ways  of  seeking  out  and  ex- 
pressing the  individualities  which  already  exist. 

Is  there  any  reason  why  nine  out  of  ten  jew- 
elry establishments  should  have  advertisements 
which  are  so  alike  in  border,  in  design  of  type, 
in  phrasing,  that  you  could  lay  your  hand  over 
the  signature  and  defy  any  one  to  tell  you  the 
name  of  the  signer?  Is  there  any  reason  for  the 
pompous  formula  of  so-called  "  institutional  " 
advertising  —  the  picture  of  the  plant  or  of  the 


Li  Hung  Chang 

Li  Hung  Chang  declined  to 
go  to  theraces  because  he  said 
it  was  already  established 
thatonehorsecouldrunfaster 
than  another.  Why  should 
a  man  look  at  machine-made 
clothes  when  he  can  be  hand 
tailored  forthesamemoney? 

MEN'S  SUITS  $30  TO  $6S 
TOPCOATS  $30  TO  |65 
HAND-TAILORED  AND  READY 


FIFTH   AVENUE 
Men's  Clothing  Shops,  8  West  38th  Street 

LOCA.TBD  ON  STREET  LEVEL 


Another  instance  of  the  way  that  Frank  Irving  Fletcher  constantly  enriches 
his  copy  by  introducing  interesting  gossip. 


42  Making  Advertisements 


founder  or  both,  at  the  top ;  the  solemn  and  res- 
onant paragraphs  protesting  of  the  house's  virtue 
and  long  years  of  faithful  service  to  the  Ameri- 
can people?  Switch  the  signature  and  all  these 
handsome  tributes  to  themselves  might  be  spoken 
equally  well  by  makers  of  condensed  milk  or 
automobile  tires  or  baked  beans  or  paint  or  men's 
clothing  or  any  other  houses  with  long  and  hon- 
orable histories  dating  back  to  an  incorporation 
prior  to  1900. 

No;  the  trouble  is  deeper-rooted  than  a  firm's 
thoughtlessness  in  failing  to  provide  itself  with 
points  of  distinction.  Suppose  we  construct  a 
rubber-stamp  piece  of  copy  and  then  call  in  the 
house-wreckers : 

Your  grandmother 
didn't  know  any  better ! 

Think  of  the  hours  your  grandmother  used  to 
waste  in  .  .  .  !  She  didn't  know  any  other  way.  But 
you  do. 

You  can  be  free,  forever,  free  from  the  drudgery 
of  ...  .  Every  day  can  be  made  longer.  You  can 
do  your  ....  better  than  ever  before  and  still  have 
plenty  of  time  for  reading,  calling,  shopping  and  the 
movies. 

The  simple  principle  of  this  device  permits  you  to 
do  more  ....  with  less  effort  in  shorter  time  at  lower 


I  know  a  banker— 

(purely  in  a  social  way.) 


"TIM,"  he  s*!^  to  m<  the  other  <l«y,  "I'm  reaDy 
I  Ju*t  ai  human  as  any  other  man  but  my  pro- 
fession calls  for  conservatism.  People  are  nervous 
when  it  comes  to  entmsting  their  money  to  others 
•nd  it  gives  them  confidence  to  discover  in  us 
bankers  a  reverence  for  the  hallowed  customs  of 
the  past" 

I  had  been  tryinj  to  persuade  him  to  give  up  his 
silver  shaving  mug  and  get  radical  in  the  privacy  of 
bis  bathroom  by  trying  Mennen  Shaving  Cream. 

I  met  him  again  next  day.  "You  win,  Jim,"  h» 
said.  "I  used  Mennen's  this  morning.  Never  had 
such  a  shave  in  my  life.  My  shaving  mug  now 
belongs  to  the  janitor." 

It's  the  first  trial  of  Mennen's  tha\  startles  you. 
After  you  have  used  it  for  a  few  months  you  forget 
the  old  fashioned  soap  with  its  thin,  watery  lather 
that  used  to  drizzle  off  the  end  of  your  chin  into 
the  cuff  of  your  pajamas -and  darken  your  whots 
outlook  on  life. 

But  the  first  Mennen  shave  is  a  revelatioh-'- 
Just  a  half  inch  of  cream  blossoms  into  billows  of 
creamy  lather  as  light  and  firm  as  beaten  whites 
of  eggs  and  full  of  moisture  as  a  fog  bank.  You 
woric  this  lather  in  with  the  brush  for  three 
minutes— -and  then— say,  I  never  have  found  the 
words  to  express  a  man's  emotion  the  first  time  he 


draws  a  razor  down  throu4bA  maskof  Mc&aeaS 
lather.    Tho  b^etrd  •iaxpty  isn't  thortt 

Afterwards  your  face  feels  like  that  of  a  kid's 
who  has  just  come  out  of  the  swimmin  g  bole  sort 
of  bright  and  easy  to  twist  into  •  smile. 

Anyway,  it  wouldn't  break  you  banken  to  try 
a  tube.         Yoan  faJthft»Hy. 


Jim  Henry  saysr 

"A  lot  of  us  smooth  shaven  young  fellows  could  raise  gray  beards'* 


You  could  look  through  many  magazines  for  many  nights  without  find- 
ing another  series  of  such  persuasive,  man-to-man,  entertaining  copy  as 
Wilbur  Gorman  and  Jim  Adams,  between  them,  have  created  for  Jim  Henry. 


44  Making  Advertisements 


cost.  Your  little  girl  can  understand  it;  that's  how 
simple  it  is!  In  thousands  of  homes  children  are 
now  doing  all  the  ....  better  and  more  economically 
than  their  mothers  did  in  the  old,  laborious  way. 

Send  your  name  to  us  on  a  postcard  and  you  will 
receive  our  newest  booklet,  "  How  to  Make  ....  a 
Pleasure,"  illustrated  in  four  colors.     Send  today ! 

Here  the  dashes  represent  almost  anything 
from  baking  to  washing  dishes,  from  sewing  to 
cleaning.  Change  the  gender  and  a  word  here 
and  there,  and  you  have  an  advertisement  for 
any  new  office  appliance.  The  form  is  chosen 
because  housekeeping  and  office-keeping  em- 
brace nearly  all  of  both  sexes'  waking  hours. 

It's  all  the  fault  of  the  outrageous  person  who 
first  boiled  down  advertising  to  this  formula: 
First,  focus  the  attention;  second,  interest  the 
reader;  third,  create  a  desire;  fourth,  show  that 
you  satisfy  that  desire;  fifth,  stimulate  action. 

There  it  all  is,  in  the  hideous  piece  of  copy 
which  we  constructed.  For  easy  reference  the 
five  steps  have  been  taken  paragraph  by  para- 
graph—  one  step  to  a  paragraph. 

And  what  do  we  get?  Obviously,  an  adver- 
tisement which  could  be  made  to  fit  almost  any 
product  under  the  sun.  Extreme?  Don't  you 
believe  it.    Turn  to  the  advertising  pages  of  the 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  4S 


nearest  magazine  or  the  advertising  columns  of 
the  handiest  newspaper. 

A  very  amusing  article  called  ^'  Ready-Write 
Paragraphs,  Inc."  by  P.  K.  Marsh  appeared  in 
Printers'  Ink  in  the  issue  of  October  23,  1919. 
The  author  calls  it  ''  a  new  service  for  over- 
worked or  underpowered  copy-carpenters ''  — 
and  it  certainly  is.  He  says  that  his  "  reading 
of  the  more  expensive  of  advertising  pages  dis- 
closed a  surprising  condition  —  advertisement 
after  advertisement  could  be  applied  to  any  type 
of  merchandise  merely  by  the  simple  expedient 
of  changing  the  trade-name  and  signature. 

"  Instantly  my  agile  mind  leaped  to  the  paral- 
lel —  motion-studies  in  industrial  production 
had  led  to  a  science  of  '  Efficiency,'  and  effi- 
ciency-experts are  making  fat  fees  from  coast  to 
coast.  How?  Largely  by  standardizing  their 
findings. 

"  Then  the  same  agile  mind  leaped  again  to  a 
book  I  had  once  found  in  a  second-hand  book 
shop  —  '  The  Ready  Letter-Writer.' 

"  My  idea  was  complete  —  sprung  full-grown 
from  the  brain  of  Jove. 

"  All  over  the  nation  there  are  harassed  copy- 
writers, advertising  managers  appointed  by  re- 


46  Making  Advertisements 

lationship  rather  than  by  experience,  and  copy- 
cubs  aspiring  to  loftier  salaries  —  there  stood 
my  potential  market,  vast,  receptive,  unsated." 

For  these  harassed  writers  he  purposed  to  is- 
sue ready-made  paragraphs,  suitable  for  use  un- 
der practically  all  conditions.     For  example: 

''  Paragraph  26  —  ^  The  thousands  of  satisfied 
carpenters  using  .  .  .  are  their  best  indorse- 
ment.' 

"  Note :  —  For  carpenters  substitute  your  par- 
ticular type  of  purchaser.  Though  this  may 
strike  a  novice  in  advertising  as  inconclusive  in 
argument  and  highly  sketchy  in  appeal,  it  is 
good  copy  because  it  cost  the  first  user  $250  a 
word. 

''  Paragraph  40  —  ^  Uninterrupted  and  eco- 
nomical performance  is  the  direct  result  of  high 
standard  of  manufacture  and  concentration  upon 
one  product  for  many  years.' 

^'Note:  —  A  particularly  choice  paragraph 
for  agency  work  as  it  applies  to  practically  any- 
thing of  a  utilitarian  nature.  Caution  —  use  a 
strong  layout. 

"Paragraph  S3  —  ^  .  .  popularity  is  based 
not  on  any  one  quality,  but  on  an  all-round  de- 
sirability which  omits  no  essential  of  satisfaction. 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  47 


The  .  .  .  itself  pleases  the  eye;  its  perform- 
ance and  economy  of  operation  confirm  the  good 
judgment  of  the  purchaser/ 

^'Note:  —  No.  S3  must  be  used  with  more 
caution  than  some  of  the  others.  ^  Economy  of 
operation  '  may,  as  needed,  be  replaced  with 
^  unusual  endurance,'  '  dependable  results '  or 
other  appealing  generality." 

But  would  he  use  his  ready-made  paragraphs 
to  advertise  his  ready-made  paragraphs?  Not 
much!  Here  is  the  sort  of  copy  he  says  he 
would  use : 

When  Inspiration  fails  you,  rely  on  R.  W.  P. 

When  your  Esterbrook  ceases  brooking,  when 
your  Conklin  fails  to  conk,  that's  when  a  fellow  needs 
a  friend. 

When  Jimmy-pipes  are  unavailing,  when  Camels 
flunk,  when  you  haven't  an  idea  worth  its  area  in 
scratch-paper  because  you've  written  the  whole 
darned  subject  dry  —  then  you  need  R.  W.  P. 

Why?  Because,  waiting  for  you  in  the  R.  W.  P. 
binder  is  an  ad  already  made,  merely  waiting  for  you 
to  insert  the  name  of  your  particular  product. 

And  every  R.  W.  P.  ad  is  a  good  ad,  sure  to  pass 
the  copy-chief  and  the  Big  Man  in  your  client's  or- 
ganization. How  do  we  know?  Because  every  ad 
has  passed  our  unique  sure-fire  $2,000  Test. 
There's  not  a  dud  in  the  whole  arsenal.  Get  our 
special  group  offer  for  agency  copy-departments. 


48  Making  Advertisements 

More  power  to  Mr.  Marsh  and  to  Printers* 
Ink  whose  editors  have  had  the  good  sense  to 
print  many  of  his  readable  jolts  to  the  compla- 
cent copy  world ! 

The  difficulty  is  that  the  person  creating  and 
authorizing  advertisements  is  too  often  what 
H.  L.  Mencken  calls  *'  an  absolutely  typical 
American  of  the  transition  stage  between  Chris- 
tian Endeavor  and  civilization." 

Generically  he  is  first  of  all  a  worshiper  of 
property.  He  is  awed  in  the  presence  of  sales 
reports,  or  capitalizations  running  into  eight  fig- 
ures. Acres  of  factory  floor  space  make  his  eyes 
glisten. 

Similarly,  he  venerates  success  for  itself  alone. 
Stories  of  young  men  who  in  seven  years  have 
gone  from  auditor  to  president —  adult  versions 
of  the  Pluck-and-Luck  school  of  Frank  Merri- 
well  —  warm  his  heart.  He  has  little  attention 
for  the  patient  study  and  constant  striving  which 
achieved  that  success;  he  sees  only  the  result. 
To  him  there  is  really  no  such  thing  as  business 
democracy;  it  is  an  autocracy  of  earning  power; 
you  fawn  upon  those  who  make  more  than  you 
do  and  bully  those  who  make  less.  That's  his 
code  of  business  manners. 


ns  hieh. 
hoist  a 


Yes,  Tm  a  Nut 

j^^^BOME  people  say  I  am  a  nut  about  making 
Mh^H   poster  advertuing  pay   better  by  maJcing 

All  right.     I  am  a  nut 

But  1  am  in  pretty  good  company. 

The  record  of  the  nuts  up  to  date  i 

Archimedes  was  a  nut,  but  you  can 
derrick'  to-d^y  without  Archie's  help.  He  was  the. 
fellow  who  said:  "Just  give  me  standing  room  for 
my  le\er.  and  I'll  pry  up  the  universe." 

Columbus  w^is  a  nut  He  went  from  capita)  to 
capital  trying  ic  find  a  king  sporty  enough  to  back 
his  plan  for  making  the  geography  twice  as  big,  and 
they  joshed  him. 

Galileo  was  a  nut,  but  they  didn't  josh  him. 
When  he  said  the  world  went  round  the  sun,  they 
tied  him  to  a  rack  and  tortured  him  until  they  made 
him  take  it  back. 

Newton  was  a  nut  But  we  might  not  know 
yet  what  makes  the  apple  (all  if  it  wasn't  for  Ike 
the  Nut 

Watt  was  a  nut  and  we  have  the  steam-engine. 

Singer  was  a  nut  and  we  have  the  tewmg- 
machine. 

Mone  was  a  nut  and  we  have  the  telegraph. 

Fulton  was  a  nut  and  we  have  the  steamboat 


When  the  English  people  heard  Stephenson's 
idea  of  a  wagon  on  ra:L>  pushed  by  steam  they 
bughed  their  heads  off.  But  Stephenson  kept  oo 
and  nc-v  no  one  knows  what  McAdoo'll  do  next 

Everybody  takes  a  Kodak  with  them  because 
Eastman  was  a  nut 

Duryea  was  a  nut  and  now  the  automobile 
industry  is  the  third  largest  in  the  country. 

Ford  was  a  nut  —  and  is  yet 

So,  if  I  am  a  nut  I  am  rather  proud  of  it 

Don't  think  that  I  put  myself  in  a  line  with 
these  names.  They  arc  all  big  nuts  —  cocoanuts,  at 
least  —  while  1  am  only  a  pea-nut 

But  I  am  just  as  much  in  earnest  about  my  own 
particular  nuttiness  as  they  were. 

1  do  believe  that  the  use  of  color  on  billboards 
for  advertising  is  in  its  infancy:  that  better  artisti 
than  have  yet  been  used  can  make  posters  that  will 
get  over,  make  a  greater  impression  and  sell  more 
goods. 

I  do  believe  that  if  I  had  a  charted  to  talk  to 
you,  I  might  (mind  you  I  only  say  "might")  be  able 
to  suggest  something  better  than  you  have  usfd  or 

Anyway.  I  am  always  willing  to  put  my  time 
against  youn  Co  find  out 

RUSLING  WOOD 


Earnest  Elmo  Calkins  is  also  a  7iut.  His  particular  type  of  nuttiness 
is  that  he  is  never  willing  to  see  an  advertiseynent  leave  the  office  of  Calkins 
y  H olden  until  it  is  carefully  de signed y  thoroughly  written  aiid  capably  illus- 
trated. 


^^i? 


Prohibition 


mmmm  k,  fmttic,  Iml  k 


Knm  Cnmtl  ttniM 


Oif>  Wniar.  C«M 


aoss  svnuM  ciovn 


^•^ 


Cnm  CrtftI  K0^w 


i^ 


'".""^ ti*  111,  lie  nt 


!^ONDaV 


TheOnlyPopularTax 
is  the  Tax  on  Others 

The  New  Taxes  will  be 
founded  on  Justice,  In 
all  Justice  there  is  an 
admixture  of  Injustice. 
To  this  injustice  wis  cam 
offer  one  consolatiork — •• 
we  will  get  used  to  it. 


'^^0 


Life  is  too  short  in 
which  to  make  two 
reputations.  One  rea» 
son  Mark  Cross  has 
never  relaxed  the  stand' 
ards  of  excellence  since 
184S. 


Cross  Silk  Bag 


The  advertiser  who 
throws  dost  in  hit  reader^ 
eyes  wUl  eoentaaUy  blind 
Aem  to  his  own  attrae- 
tionM. 


Cross  Silk  Bag 


Many  years  ago  a  poet 
speaking  of  various  things 
said  thai  "Many  a  flower 
is  born  lo  blush  unteen" 
This  column  is  intended  to 
prevent  oar  sharing  that 
dark  obscurity. 


Believing  that  arguments  about  quality  "  are  not  read 
ivith  as  much  conviction  by  the  public  as  by  the  writer 
of  them;'  Frederic  T.  Murphy  of  Mark  Cross  amuses  by 
the  epigrams  at  the  head  of  his  advertisements. 


50  Making  Advertisements 

He  is  ready  to  indorse  What-Has-Been-Done 
and  to  question  Anything-Different.  His  let- 
ters come  to  you  ''  Dictated  but  Not  Read."  He 
has  his  secretary  call  you  on  the  phone  and  keeps 
you  waiting  until  he  gets  ready  to  talk. 

If  he  is  an  advertiser  his  modesty  about  his 
concern  takes  the  form  of  saying,  "  We  think 
we  have  a  rather  unique  organization  here," 
meaning,  of  course,  that  there  couldn't  possibly 
be  another  organization  so  good. 

He  protests  that  he  doesn't  interfere  with  his 
company's  advertising  in  any  way  but  mentions 
casually  that  he  ^'  dashed  ofiF  a  little  thing  a  year 
or  so  ago  "  which  was  used  as  a  full  page  adver- 
tisement and  ''  everybody  said  it  was  the  best 
thing  the  house  ever  did." 

Such  a  man  can  be  prevailed  upon  to  consent, 
with  just  the  proper  amount  of  reluctance,  to 
sign  his  company's  advertisements  and  presently 
he  will  honestly  believe  that  he  wrote  them  him- 
self or,  at  the  least,  that  he  ''  wrote  them  in  the 
rough  and  let  somebody  else  whip  them  into 
shape."  In  color  advertising  he  likes  any  color 
if  it  is  red.  He  "  doesn't  know  anything  about 
art,  but  he  knows  what  he  likes." 

Transplant  that  type  of  man  to  the  advertis- 


Discovered 
RtCORO  ? 

ToiJ  hy  a  Thtatricai  Managtr 


" Each  puff  deserves  an  encore — 

and  the  price  brings  down  the  house" 


"A  Dramatic  Critic  discovered 
the  Ricoro  cigar,"  said  the  Theat- 
rical Manager  — "and  it  was  the 
best  thing  that  bird  ever  did. 

"It  was  on  the  opening  night  of 
'The  Music  Master'  when  I  spot- 
ted this  fellow  smoking  in  the 
wings.  Before  I  recognized  him  I 
hissed, 'Hey,  no  smoking!  Lay  off 
that  cigar !'  and  regretted  my 
brusqueness  as  soon  as  I  saw  w  ho 
he  was. 

"Later,  I  met  him  in  the  green 
room  and  apologized.  'No  offense 
—  no  offense,'  he  laughed.  'I'm  an 
inveterate  smoker,  and  have  a 
cigar  going  most  of  the  time.  Tr>' 
one  of 'em  — see  if  you  blame  me!' 


"I  lighted  up— and.  Shades  of 
Bopth!  It  was  some  cigar!  When 
he  said  it  was  a  Ricoro,  and  that 
I  could  buy  'em  for  only  10  cents 
at  any  United  Cigar  Store,  it 
was  as  pleasant  a  surprise  as  the 
two-column  boost  he  gave  the 
show  next  morning!" 

Sctoner  or  later  you'll  discover  Ricoro 
— ^'ou'll  be  astounded  at  the  quality  of 
Ricoro.  It  is  a  beautifully  made  cigar  of 
ricfi  tropic  fragrance  and  gentle  mildness. 

The  popular  prices  of  Ricoro  are  made 
possible  because  it  is  im- 
ported from  Porto  Rico  July 
free.  A  dozen  sizes  and 
shapes— 8c  to  3  for  50c. 
Sold  only  m  L'nited  Cigar 
Slores--Tkank  You!" 


UNITED  CIGAR  STORES 


-t^  lSeM7f[ac&'Ci^ar 


A  striking  copy  idea,  consistently  carried  out.  Notice  the  zvay  in  which 
the  theatre  motif  runs  through  the  copy.  In  each  advertisement  of  this  series 
prepared  by  the  Federal  Advertising  Agency,  the  choice  of  words  was  just 
as  appropriate. 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  51 

ing  business  and  he  becomes  ''  a  merchan- 
dising expert."  He  exerts  pressure  on  pros- 
pects through  bankers.  He  shakes  hands  at 
dinners,  moving  from  table  to  table.  He  joins 
organizations.  Mysteriously  he  speaks  of  prob- 
lems. His  customers  are  clients.  When  you 
phone  to  him  he  is  always  in  a  conference. 

His  assistants  are  pale  reflections  of  himself 
and,  since  they  commonly  do  most  of  his  work 
while  he  pounds  desks  in  offices,  his  assistants 
apply  his  ideas  to  the  preparation  of  advertising. 

Their  minds  run  in  the  grooves  already  carved 
by  others.  They  aren^t  taking  any  chances  and 
they  aren't  going  through  any  unnecessary  mo- 
tions. Apparently  they  believe  that  if  you  ring 
enough  changes  on  the  good  old  appeals  and 
presentations  you  can  take  care  of  any  advertis- 
ing campaign  ever  started.  So  why  waste 
energy  and  risk  failure  by  seeking  anything 
new? 

A  good  illustration  of  those  who  are  in  the  rut 
and  those  who  get  out  of  it  is  furnished  by  time- 
liness in  advertising.  To  the  bromides,  timeli- 
ness merely  means  a  chance  to  trail  along  with 
the  thoughts  which  happen  to  be  occupying  pub- 
lic attention  at  the  moment.     To  the  sulphides, 


52  Making  Advertisements 

it  means  an  opportunity  to  do  a  striking  thing  in 
a  striking  way. 

The  rut-nestlers  welcomed  the  word  camou- 
flage when  it  arrived  from  France  —  welcomed 
it,  ran  it  into  every  possible  piece  of  copy, 
twisted  it  this  way  and  that,  squeezed  it  into 
headlines,  poured  it  into  body  text,  and  finally 
wore  all  the  paint  ofif.  A  little  later  they  decided 
that  every  piece  of  copy  ought  to  have  a  war 
angle  and  they  showed  snappy  American 
officers  packing  their  kits  —  officers  with 
Sam  Browne  belts  over  the  wrong  shoulders, 
officers  wearing  campaign  hats  where  tin  hats 
would  have  been  required,  and  officers  wearing 
tin  hats  at  the  ports  —  always  officers,  always 
loading  up  their  kits  or  getting  advertised  prod- 
ucts in  packages  from  home.  One  American 
manufacturer  actually  decided  that  just  to  be 
different  he  would  show  plain  doughboys  using 
his  product,  and  the  effect  was  so  refreshing  that 
he  received  a  round-robin  letter  of  appreciation 
signed  by  six  doughboys  in  France. 

Timeliness  to  many  means  copy  planned  ac- 
cording to  the  following  illustrative  formula: 
January  —  a  naked  little  boy  representing  the 
New  Year;  February —  Cupids,  hearts  and  val- 


bu5iness  to-day.      Offers  ten  year    r 
old  w^hisKey  to-morrow.  ^    -^ 

Where  does  he  get  it?  "^ 

I  give  up.  Out  my  ^vay  we  can't  live 
ten  years  over  night  I  am  able  to  sell  old 
whiskey  because  I  have  an  old  business. 

M^Henry 

Founded  1812.     Costs  you  no  more. 


If  you  find  a  dealer  i?vho 
doesn't  Keep  M^HeiiTy 
please  step  softly:  hell  be 
cross  if  you  w^aKe  him  vb>. 

Founded  1812.      Costs  you  no  more. 


Father  Time  is  a  partner  in 
my  business.  He  'tends  to 
the  aging.  Most  folks  use 
a  printing  press  instead. 

M^Henry  whiskey 

Founded  1812.       Costs  you  no  more. 


They  say  the  good  die  young. 

M^Henry  whiskey  is 

very     old     and     very     good. 

Mistake   somew^here. 

Founded  1812.    Costs  you  no  more. 


These  clever  street  car  cards  are  by  J.  K.  Fraser,  the  inventor  of  the 
famous  Spotless  Town  series. 


54  Making  Advertisements 

entines;  March  —  St.  Patrick  and  shamrocks; 
April  —  Easter  lilies,  Easter  eggs  and  rabbits; 
May  —  either  May-poles  or  the  Decoration  Day 
motif;  June  —  the  sweet  girl  graduate;  July  — 
Uncle  Sam  and  firecrackers;  August  —  sailing, 
seashore,  vacations;  September  —  back-to- 
school  stuff;  October — Hallowe'en,  witches. 
Jack-o'-lanterns;  November  —  turkeys;  Decem- 
ber —  Santa  Claus. 

Watch  the  people  who  pride  themselves  on 
the  seasonableness  of  their  copy  and  see  how 
many  work  these  ideas  into  their  pictures,  their 
borders  and  even  into  the  headlines  and  copy. 

That  isn't  timeliness.  That's  getting  your 
copy  ideas  from  the  almanac.  Here  are  some 
instances  of  genuine  timeliness,  instances  which 
smashed  their  way  to  public  attention: 

At  one  o'clock  one  morning  last  summer  the 
British  dirigible  R-34  started  on  her  homeward 
voyage.  The  New  York  papers  on  the  morning 
of  her  safe  arrival  in  England  carried  a  full- 
page  advertisement  reproduced  on  the  opposite 
page. 

One  day  while  the  submarine  war  was  still 
going  on,  the  wireless  brought  word  to  New 
York  that  a  passenger  steamship  had  been  sunk 


The  sign  of  a  reliable  dealer 
and    tke    workTt   best  GasoUac 


took  her  home 


The  fuel  tanks  of  R-34  were  filled 
with  SoCOny  Aviation  Gasoline 
on  her  trip  home. 

Quite  naturally  she  made  splendid  time  and  her 
engines  did  all  that  was  asked  of  them— drivea 
by  clean-buming,  power-full  SoCOny  Gasoline. 

STANDAEID  OIL  COMPANY  OF  ^fEW  YORK 


SaCPNY  GASQUNE 


When  the  whole  world  zvas  thinking  about  R-34,  the  McCann  Company 
saw  its  legitimate  opportunity  to  present  the  reliability  of  Socony  Gasoline. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more  apt  example  of  the  proper  use  of  timeli- 
ness in  advertising. 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  55 

at  sea.     The  next  day  the  W.  S.  S.  people  pub- 
lished a  full-page  based  on  that  event. 

Going  from  the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous,  a 
hat  merchant  on  Forty-second  street  decided 
that  his  landlord's  most  recent  raise  in  rent  was 
one  too  many.  He  told  the  public  all  about  it 
in  a  five-column  advertisement  the  next  day,  say- 
ing that  he  preferred  to  sell  hats  at  his  regular 
price,  and  that  he  vs^ould  continue  to  do  so  at  his 
new  address. 

The  same  people  who  say  that  ^'  advertising 
must  be  a  fascinating  game  "  are  now  beginning 
to  add  that  they  "  understand  it  has  been  reduced 
to  pretty  much  of  a  science." 

Why,  it  hasn't  begun!  To  be  sure  it  has  pro- 
gressed further  in  ten  years  than  in  the  preced- 
ing two  decades  and  further  in  thirty  years  than 
in  the  preceding  thirty  centuries.     But  why? 

Not  because  of  anything  done  by  the  type  of 
advertising  man  who  is  content  to  make  his  ad- 
vertising like  other  advertising.  For  all  of  him, 
clothing  advertising  would  still  show  men  in 
plug  hats  and  tail  coats,  men  looking  like  villains 
in  the  ten-twenty- thirty  melodramas.  Patent 
medicine  advertising  would  still  go  as  univer- 
sally unchallenged  as  it  goes  today  in  many 
otherwise  respectable  papers. 


56  Making  Advertisements 

When  Charles  Austin  Bates  showed  the  ad- 
vertising world  that  a  mailing  card  could  be  cov- 
ered with  humor  and  salesmanship  and  humanity 
all  at  once;  when  Earnest  Elmo  Calkins  and  In- 
galls  Kimball  proved  that  art  and  taste  were  as 
much  at  home  in  advertising  as  in  galleries  and 
libraries ;  when  S.  Wilbur  Corman  demonstrated 
that  the  language  of  everyday  had  more  selling- 
power  than  stilted  sentences ;  when  Stanley  Resor 
decided  that  an  advertising  page  could  be  made 
as  interesting  as  an  editorial  page;  when  J.  K. 
Eraser  found  that  people  liked  jingles  which 
rhymed  and  scanned,  and  that  a  whole  volume  of 
argument  could  be  condensed  into  a  phrase  on  a 
street  car  card ;  when  Richard  H.  Waldo  proved 
on  Good  Housekeeping  that  a  magazine  could 
guarantee  all  merchandise  advertised  in  its 
pages;  and  when  Ogden  Reid  and  G.  V.  Rogers 
gave  him  an  opportunity  to  clean  up  the  adver- 
tising ideas  of  New  York  by  proving  with  the 
New  York  Tribune  that  the  same  principle 
could  be  applied  by  a  newspaper  — 

These  were  a  few  of  the  moments  when  adver- 
tising took  a  leap  forward  and  upward  in  this 
country.  If  these  men  had  been  afraid  to 
recommend  a  new  idea  or  if  the  people  whose 


P.P.C. 

Printing  Facta 

The  paragraph  you  are  now 
reading  is  not  "  justified." 
That  is,  it  is  set  up  just  like 
typewriting  with  a  "  space  " 
of  equal  width  between  all  of 
the  words.    Each  line  starts 
all  right  at  the  left-hand 
edge,  but  ends  where  it  wilL 
Now,  typesetting  diifers  from 
typewriting  in  that  the  right- 
hajid  edge  must  be  as  straight 
as  the  left-hand  edge.    This 
result  is  achieved  by  insert- 
ing "  spaces  **  of  varying 
width  between  -the  words,  and 
sometimes  "  letter-spacing  " 
the  words  thernselve*.    This  is 
called  "justification." 

iContiauad  on  Thundty) 

Publishers  PrintingCompany 

209  West  25th  Street 

r«/«y>Aoo«  Chelsea  7£tfO 


P.P.C. 

Printing  Facts 

Type  smaller  than  ten  point 
shoiild  never  be  used  for  advertis- 
ing  nteratxire.  Then,  too,  this 
ten-point  type  should  be  leaded, 
as  in  the  paragraph  you  are  now 
reading. 

Here  we  have  eight  point  •olid. 
Twice  as  many  words  can  be  set  to  the 
square  Inch  in  this  size  as  in  the  ten 
point  leaded,  as  shown  above.  Nine  out 
of  ten  people  will  refuse  to  read  an  ad- 
vertisement when  it  is  set  in  type  as 
hard  to  read  as  this. 

When  tempted  to  use  a  small, 
sized  type  it  is  always  better  to 
boil  down  the  story  to  half  of  its 
original  length  and  set  it  in  ten 
point,  leaded. 

Publishers  Printing  Company 

209  West  25th  Street 

Telephone  Chebea  7840 


P.P.C. 

Printing  Facts 

(.Continued  from  Tuesday ) 
Now  this  paragraph  has  been 
justified.  The  ragged  edge  at  the 
right  has  disappeared.  One  oJ 
the  tests  of  composition,  whether 
by  hand  or  machine,  lies  in  the  ju^* 
tification. 

Sometimes  you  see  too  many 
words  crowded  into  a  line.  Th^ 
makes  for  difficult  reading. 

When  there  are  too 
few  words  '  to  a  line, 
the  spaces  between  the 
words  are  too  conspicuous, 
«nd  the  result  is  dis* 
tinctly      tmpleasant. 

The  skilful  compositor  is  ex. 
ceedingly  particular  about  his 
justification,  because  this  per. 
haps  above  all  else  makes  for 
good  or  bad  typography. 

Publishers  Printing  Company 
^09  West  25th  Street 

Telephone  Chelsea  ?84/> 

P.P.C. 

Printing  Facts 

Here  is  a  good  formula  for  those 
who  use  photo  engravings: 

Line  cuts  can  be  printed  on  any 
kind  of  printing  paper. 

Half-tones  of  133  screen  and 
ISO  screen  can  be  printed  on  coated 
paper. 

Half-tones  ofl20  screen  and  133 
screen  can  be  printed  on  super 
paper — or  a  good  quality  of  Eng- 
lish Finish  Paper, 

When  in  doubt  always  use  the 
coarser  screen — ^but  not  coarser 
than  120. 

Do  not  try  to  print  vignettes 
on  uncoated  paper. 

Publishers  Printing  Company 
209  West  25th  Street 

Telephone  Chelsea  TS4a 


Here  is  one  firm  that  educates  customers.     Ralph  I.  Bartholomew  is  re- 
sponsible for  these  fine  examples  of  how  to  pick  and  then  sell  an  audience. 


58  Making  Advertisements 


advertising  they  were  preparing  had  said, 
*'  Well,  we've  never  done  anything  like  that  be- 
fore," advertising  would  never  have  shown  its 
amazing  progress. 

But  it's  only  fairly  well  started.  The  biggest 
part  of  the  job  lies  ahead.  In  his  book,  "  Preju- 
dices," H.  L.  Mencken  says: 

"  Why  do  we  Americans  take  off  our  hats  when 
we  meet  a  flapper  on  the  street,  and  yet  stand  covered 
before  a  male  of  the  highest  eminence?  A  Conti- 
nental would  regard  this  last  as  boorish  to  the  last  de- 
gree; In  greeting  any  equal  or  superior,  male  or 
female,  actual  or  merely  conventional,  he  lifts  his 
head-piece.  Why  does  It  strike  us  as  ludicrous  to 
see  a  man  In  dress  clothes  before  6  p.m.?  The 
Continental  puts  them  on  whenever  he  has  a  solemn 
visit  to  make,  whether  the  hour  be  six  or  noon. 
Why  do  we  regard  It  as  Indecent  to  tuck  the  napkin 
between  the  waistcoat  buttons  —  or  Into  the  neck !  — 
at  meals?  The  Frenchman  does  It  without  thought 
of  crime.  So  does  the  Italian.  So  does  the  Ger- 
man. All  three  are  punctilious  men  —  far  more  so, 
Indeed,  than  we  are.  Why  do  we  snicker  at  the  man 
who  wears  a  wedding  ring?  Most  Continentals 
would  stare  askance  at  the  husband  who  didn't. 
Why  Is  It  bad  manners  In  Europe  and  America  to  ask 
a  stranger  his  or  her  age,  and  a  friendly  attention  in 
China?  Why  do  we  regard  It  as  absurd  to  dis- 
tinguish a  woman  by  her  husband's  title  —  e.g.  Mrs. 
Judge  Jones,  Mrs.  Professor  Smith?     In  Teutonic 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  59 


and  Scandinavian  Europe  the  omission  of  the  title 
would  be  looked  upon  as  an  affront." 

And  later  in  the  same  chapter: 

"  Why  do  otherwise  sane  men  believe  in  spirits? 
What  is  the  genesis  of  the  American  axiom  that  the 
fine  arts  are  unmanly?  What  is  the  precise  machin- 
ery of  the  process  called  falling  in  love  ?  Why  do 
people  believe  newspapers?  .  .  .  Let  there  be  light!  " 

There  are  scores  of  questions  which  the  adver- 
tising man  wants  answers  for,  as  Mr.  Mencken 
says : 

*'  After  all,  not  many  of  us  care  a  hoot  whether 
Sir  Oliver  Lodge  and  the  Indian  chief  Wok-a-wok- 
a-mok  are  happy  in  heaven,  for  not  many  of  us  have 
any  hope  or  desire  to  meet  them  there.  Nor  are  we 
greatly  excited  by  the  discovery  that,  of  twenty-five 
freshmen  who  are  hit  with  clubs,  17|  will  say 
'  Ouch !  '  and  22^  will  say  '  Damn !  ' ;  nor  by  a  table 
showing  that  38.2  per  centum  of  all  men  accused  of 
homicide  confess  when  locked  up  with  the  carcasses 
of  their  victims,  including  23.4  per  centum  who  are 
mnocent;  nor  by  plans  and  specifications,  by  Caglios- 
tro  out  of  Lucrezia  Borgia,  for  teaching  poor, 
God-forsaken  school  children  to  write  before  they 
can  read  and  to  multiply  before  they  can  add;  nor 
by  endless  disputes  between  half-witted  pundits  as  to 
the  precise  difference  between  perception  and  cogni- 
tion; nor  by  even  longer  feuds,  between  pundits  even 


6o  Making  Advertisements 

crazier,  over  free  will,  the  subconscious,  the  endo- 
neurlum,  the  functions  of  the  corpora  quadrigemlna, 
and  the  meaning  of  dreams  in  which  one  is  pursued 
by  hyenas,  process-servers  or  grass  widows." 

It's  undoubtedly  true  that  many  of  the  same 
fundamentals  underlie  all  branches  of  business 
and  that  advertising  men  are  constantly  encoun- 
tering parallels  between  one  man's  puzzles  and 
another's.  The  cry  of  '^  My  business  is  differ- 
ent! "  is  still  prevalent  though  it  is  on  the  wane. 
But  there  are  hundreds  of  questions  which  ad- 
vertising men  want  answered  —  advertising  men 
who  are  not  satisfied  to  shuffle  the  same  old  pack 
of  ideas  and  deal  to  their  customers  from  the 
same  deck. 

Why  do  all  women  respond  to  the  style  ap- 
peal? It's  easy  enough  to  say  that  it  is  their  in- 
stinct to  adorn  themselves.  Why  is  it?  Be- 
cause they  want  to  attract  the  opposite  sex? 
Why  should  they?  In  some  races  women  do  the 
wooing  —  even  in  this  country  among  the  cliff- 
dwellers  of  Arizona,  if  we  are  to  believe  those 
who  have  studied  the  tribe. 

Why  does  the  woman  run  the  household  ex- 
penditures in  some  homes  and  the  man  in  others? 
Are  those  people  right  who  tell  us  that  nearly 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  6i 

90  per  cent  of  purchases  for  the  home  are  made 
by  women?  Have  they  studied  enough  homes? 
Perhaps  they  have,  but  have  they? 

Then  why  advertise  to  men  at  all?  And  yet 
every  advertising  man  can  remember  successful 
advertising  of  this  type  in  the  so-called  men's 
magazines.  Is  that  because  men's  magazines 
are  read  by  women? 

Is  there  any  such  thing  as  a  man's  magazine 
or  a  woman's  magazine?  How  distinct  is  the 
line  between  mass  and  class  circulation?  Can 
you  say  that  this  newspaper  is  read  only  by 
horny-handed  sons  of  toil  who  get  into  subway 
expresses  in  their  overalls?  Can  you  say  that 
that  magazine  is  read  only  by  those  who  eat  hot- 
house grapes,  drive  racing  cars,  winter  at  Palm 
Beach,  have  nine  servants  and  children  who 
elope  with  chauffeurs  and  show  girls? 

You  see  low-priced  merchandise  selling  out  of 
the  magazines  whose  contents  are  supposed  to 
be  a  secret  among  Newport  cottagers  and  dia- 
mond necklaces  being  profitably  featured  in 
newspapers  read  by  stenographers.  Nor  has 
this  condition  been  limited  to  the  recent  days 
when  high  wages  have  made  the  poor  rich  and 
the  income  tax  has  made  the  rich  poor.    A  cer- 


62  Making  Advertisements 

tain  perfume  advertiser  has  made  a  success  of 
advertising  to  Fifth  Avenue  in  order  to  sell 
Third  Avenue. 

Since  all  your  friends  tell  you  they  never  read 
long  advertisements,  who  does? 

You  can  still  find  people  who  are  indignant 
because  the  flat  magazines  carry  over  their 
stories  into  the  advertising  pages  and  you  can 
find  just  as  many  people  who  feel  that  the  old 
standard  magazine,  with  its  advertising  section 
at  the  back,  seems  small  and  cramped.  Which 
size  is  better  from  an  advertising  viewpoint? 
Is  it  better  to  strike  a  reader  when  his  mind  is 
on  a  carried-over  story  and  when  you  must  pull 
his  eye  away  from  editorial  matter  or  when  he 
is  frankly  leafing  over  the  advertising  pages? 
Besides,  how  big  is  a  page? 

Is  a  reader  who  subscribes  to  a  magazine  a 
better  prospect  than  one  who  buys  it  on  a  news- 
stand? What  is  the  right  proportion  between 
subscriptions  and  news-stand  sales? 

You  may  argue  that  the  subscriber  is  a  better 
prospect  because  he  has  shown  his  interest  by 
contracting  for  a  whole  year  of  the  magazine  at 
once  or  that  the  news-stand  buyer  is  more  valu- 
able because  he  voluntarily  makes  the  effort  of 


Tlif  Lhlhs  lk<i,h-J.w>i.il  foi  O.Uvi.  /.;/•)       /-•>■> 


IV  tjrhei  has  a  motor-car 
And  mother  too  can  steer  it. 
My  sister  owns  a  bicycle 
But  1  may  not  eo  near  it. 

Upon  «  red  velocipede 
My  brother  rides  about 

And  even  baby  has  a  cart 
When  nursie  takes  her  out. 

I  am  too  big  for  go-carts,  and 
My  mothersays,  too  small 

To  have  a  tricycle"  like  Nan's 
Because  I'd  maybe  fall.  ' 

So  wheni  used  to  want  to  travel 
Up  or  down  the  street 

I  almost  always  had  to  go 
Just  only  on  my  feet. 


But  nowl'vesomethingof  myown 
That  takes  me  near  or  far, 

1  don't  suppose  you'd  guess,  but  it's 
A  reg'iar  Kiddie-Kar! 

I  had  a  fight  with  Bobby  Lee 
He'd  always  want  to  ride  it 

And  took  it  almost  every  day 
Until  1  had  to  hide  it. 

And  then  one  time  1  just  went  up 
And  asked  his  daddy  whether 

He  couldn't  have  one  too,  and  now 
We  Kiddie-Kar  together! 


TT"  IDDIE  KAR.  first  built  by  a  fjih*t  for 
■^^  his  own  child,  is  not  a  grown-up's  idea 
ofwh.it  a  child  ought  to  like,  but  a  simple 
conveyance  which  satisfies  a  natural  insiincc 
of  ihe  child.  It  fills  a  period  noi  taken  care 
of  by  any  other  vehicle. 

Ir  IS  perfectly  safe,  even  fot  a  baby  one 
year  old.  It  is  close  to  the  ground  and 
almost  impossible  to  tip  over.  There  is 
nothing  to  pinch  fingers  or  tear  clothes. 
No  sharp  comers,  no  splinters— every  sur- 
face is  sand-papered.  No  adjustments  to 
gel  out  of  order    No  paint  to  come  off. 

It  is  the  only  practical  indoor- vehicle. 
It  gives  the  child  healthful  exercise  out- 
doors.    It  is  used  the  whole  year  round. 

Don't  wait  till  Christmas.  Get  one  for 
your  child  to  ride  these  brisk  October  days. 

You  will  find  Kiddie-Kar  wherever  juve- 
nile vehicles  are  sold. 


REAL    KIDDIE-KARS    ARE    MADE    ONLY    BY   WHITE 


YAade  m  ftve  sizes 


No  I -(or  1.2  , 
No  2-fo>  M  1 
No  3— foi  J^  1 
No  «— fo»  4.S  1 
No  S-<orovn 


Kiddie-Kar 

MADE  IN  AMERICA  FOR  AMERICAN  GIRLS  AND  BOYS 


Tl.c  only  tcnuln. 

KIDDIF- 

KAR  11   m«d«  tn 

iK.  H   C 

Whtic  Com;ftn» 

ol  Honh, 

B<n«.r>ro".  v.. 

Thewmc 

KIDDIE-KAR  u 

ttflUtttd 

tfftde  tnatk.  II   u 

•  Iwsft  on 

tK<MM    TKfKlDDlE  KAR 

u  pfMranl  by  fe 

•ur  p«rcrtt& 

Jingles  can  rhyme  and  scan  and  you  can  pack  a  volume  of  selling  talk  into 
three  short  paragraphs  —  if  you  have  Richard  Walsh  of  Barrows  6* 
Richardson  as  your  copy-writer. 


Getting  Out  of  the  Rut  63 


going  to  the  news-stand  to  get  his  copy.  But 
the  subscriber's  interest  may  lag  and  he  may 
leave  next  month's  issue  in  its  wrapper  until 
some  one  starts  a  fire  with  it.  And  the  news- 
stand buyer  may  forget  to  go  to  the  stand  next 
month.     And  there  you  are. 

Why  will  a  man  unhesitatingly  buy  a  cigar  for 
another  man  when  he  would  not  think  of  select- 
ing a  box  of  cigarettes  for  the  same  man?  Is  it 
because  the  brand  names  of  cigarettes  have  been 
impressed  so  much  more  generally  and  insist- 
ently than  the  brand  names  of  cigars  that  indi- 
vidual tastes  in  cigarettes  are  more  generally  rec- 
ognized? Or  is  it  because  the  man  who  buys  a 
cigar  for  a  friend  knows  that  his  selection  will 
be  welcome  since  he  usually  pays  more  for  it 
than  he  thinks  his  friend  would  venture  to  sug- 
gest? 

Why  will  a  certain  piece  of  copy  pull  like  a 
mule  in  a  certain  publication  and  curl  up  and 
die  in  another  of  the  same  type? 

What  is  the  mysterious  driving  force  that  gets 
into  some  campaigns  of  apparently  mediocre 
merit  and  lifts  them  on  to  success  without  a  sec- 
ond's hesitation?  Is  it  timeliness,  keeping  just 
far  enough  ahead  of  popular  desires,  brains  or 


64  Making  Advertisements 

just  luck?  Every  advertising  man  can  remem- 
ber campaigns  in  which  the  stage  had  been 
beautifully  set,  everything  possible  had  been 
done  —  and  nothing  happened.  Every  adver- 
tising man  can  remember  ill-fated  campaigns  in 
which  everything  went  wrong  from  the  start  of 
preparation  to  the  day  the  first  advertisement  ap- 
peared—  and  then  suddenly  it  swept  along  se- 
renely to  success.  There  is  something  almost 
alive  about  a  campaign  at  times  —  as  elusive  as 
a  three-foot  putt,  as  contagious  as  a  saxophone 
obligato  —  as  skittish  as  a  village  vamp. 


IV 

ATMOSPHERE 


IV 
ATMOSPHERE 

You  are  walking  along  Fifth  Avenue  and 
your  eye  is  attracted  by  a  scarf  in  the  window  of 
a  haberdasher's  establishment.  You  enter  the 
shop  and  are  conscious  of  a  number  of  sleek 
young  men  standing  about. 

One  of  them  bows  to  you.  You  explain  that 
you  would  like  a  closer  look  at  those  scarfs  in  the 
window,  and  you  ask  their  price. 

"  They  are  twelve  dollars,  I  believe,"  he  re- 
plies, and  his  manner  suggests  that  he  disap- 
proves of  displaying  merchandise  so  publicly. 
If  it  were  left  to  him  there  would  be  no  show 
windows  to  attract  the  idly  curious  like  yourself. 

"May  I  see  one?"  you  ask.  Another  bow. 
He  goes  to  the  back  of  the  shop  and  has  a  con- 
ference with  an  even  more  important  personage. 
This  man  calls  to  some  one  answering  to  the 
name  of  Jenkins.  Evidently  Jenkins  is  the  man 
who  does  the  rough  work  around  the  place.  He 
doesn't  mind  exposing  himself  to  the  public  view 

67 


68  Making  Advertisements 

by  inserting  the  upper  half  of  his  body  into  the 
show  window. 

Presently  the  scarf  is  laid  before  you.  Clearly 
your  request  has  put  a  considerable  number  of 
people  to  a  great  deal  of  trouble,  so  you  examine 
this  scarf  with  respect.  It  is  a  very  presentable 
scarf.  Its  color  is  good  and  its  texture  is  agree- 
able. But  under  ordinary  circumstances  you 
would  hardly  think  that  it  represented  twelve 
dollars.  If  you  passed  a  man  wearing  that  scarf 
on  the  Avenue  you  would  not  be  likely  to  ex- 
claim, "  There  goes  a  man  wearing  a  scarf  which 
cost  twelve  dollars! " 

But  with  the  sleek  young  man  standing  ready 
to  have  you  prove  yourself  either  a  connoisseur 
or  an  impostor  you  shrivel  into  a  coward. 

"  I'll  take  it,"  you  murmur. 

Atmosphere  did  it. 

In  one  of  the  most  exclusive  suburbs  of  an 
Eastern  city  a  carefully  dressed  young  man 
walked  briskly  along  an  avenue  of  homes. 
From  his  crisp  straw  hat  to  his  well  polished 
cordovans  he  suggested  just  the  right  degree  of 
smartness.  He  turned  in  at  one  of  the  most  at- 
tractive homes,  swinging  his  walking  stick. 

From  an  upper  window  a  lady  saw  him  ap- 


One  word  is  sometimes  stronger  than  a  volume.  Joseph  Husband  cj 
Husband  iy  Thomas  found  several  which  he  used  one  at  a  time  in  this  power- 
ful series. 


Atmosphere  69 

preaching,  heard  him  run  up  the  steps,  cross  the 
veranda  and  ring  the  bell  —  two  short  rings,  the 
summons  of  a  busy  man  with  no  time  to  waste. 

She  reached  the  front  hall  just  ahead  of  her 
maid.  As  she  opened  the  door  the  young  man 
made  two  gestures  —  one  with  his  right  hand 
and  one  with  his  left  foot:  he  took  off  his  hat  and 
he  stepped  backward.  Instinctively  she  opened 
the  door  even  wider.     He  stepped  inside. 

Ten  minutes  later  she  smiled  on  him  as  he  de- 
parted. And  then,  rather  breathlessly  she  real- 
ized that  she  had  committed  herself  to  pay  four 
dollars  a  year  for  a  subscription  to  the  fashion 
magazine  which  the  young  man  represented. 

Back  in  a  sky  scraper  in  New  York  sat  a  man 
in  an  expensive  office.  He  could  tell  you  why 
the  lady  herself  had  come  downstairs  to  open 
the  door.  Atmosphere  did  it  —  the  good 
clothes,  the  busy  walk,  the  air  of  importance, 
and  the  right  type  of  man.  If  she  had  seen  a 
carelessly  dressed  man  shuffling  along  the  side- 
walk, glancing  hopefully  at  the  second  floor 
windows,  she  would  have  called  to  her  maid  to 
say  that  she  wasn't  at  home  and  to  tell  that  book 
agent  not  to  come  back. 

The  man  in  New  York  could  tell  you  why  she 


yo  Making  Advertisements 

unconsciously  invited  his  representative  to  enter. 
Again,  atmosphere  —  the  courtesy  of  a  lifted 
hat,  the  deference  expressed  in  the  backward 
step,  disarming  her  instinct  of  self-protection. 
If  he  had  taken  a  step  forward  she  would  have 
closed  the  door. 

But  for  all  these  trifles  the  guiding  genius  in 
New  York  would  take  small  credit  compared  to 
the  idea  to  which  he  attributes  the  success  of  his 
salesmen's  methods.  That  idea  was  the  finishing 
touch.     It  was  the  walking  stick. 

He  found  that  no  matter  how  carefully  he 
drilled  his  salesmen  in  their  approach,  no  matter 
how  well  they  were  dressed  nor  how  adroit  they 
were  in  the  blend  of  chivalry  and  firmness  that 
makes  a  man  successful  in  selling  to  women,  the 
percentage  of  orders  to  calls  was  not  satisfactory. 
Then  he  sent  out  for  a  dozen  walking  sticks. 
He  paid  four  dollars  apiece  for  them.  And  he 
will  tell  you  that  they  were  the  best  investment 
he  ever  made.  They  opened  doors.  They  pro- 
duced orders.  They  are  now  standard  equip- 
ment—  as  vital  as  the  hidden  pocket  that  holds 
the  prospectus  without  making  the  suit  bulge. 

The  creation  of  atmosphere  is  even  more  im- 
portant in  advertising  than  in  spoken  salesman- 


m 


Striking 
Burglars 

A$  thl$  tdetrliitmrrl 
ton  to  frtlt  m  llmrn 
t  km  t  t  h  »  Burflen 
Union  Aoi  Jicldrd  lo 

U  a  ttrikt  m»  a  proUtt 
agcintt  two  of  th*:, 
mtmbrrt  having  betr 
ttopp*d  fCTlf  ont  morn 
ini  tittU$t  fclnf  or 
dutf. 


0««  ftalsfraM  fKnu 


I 


Clftr  Cm*,  TiwmlUnt  WttOi 


Ct^u  Tramautf  Buf 


nui.iiu>.tiu> 


Cttu  rMuit  rttit 


1W  ••K-i  Cmm  U«.  fc^ 

IWTak 


•T— ».     a*.,..!.. 


Samson 

Took 

Two  Columns 


ft  it  tuggested  that  Sam- 
son  had  a  keen  idea  of  ad- 
vertising. Samson  took  two 
solid  columns,  with  the  re- 
sult that  he  brought  down 
the  house. 


'^0 


So  far  the  Peace 
Casualties  are  not 
excessive  in  propor- 
tion to  the  numbers 
engaged  in  the 
struggle. 


Hamlet 
Revised 

A  leather  article  with- 
out the  Crost  trade-mmk 
is,  as  the  Frenchman  said, 
"like  the  play  of  Omelette 
without  the  egg.'* 


A  London  clergyman 
assures  us  the  world  u 
coming  to  an  end  this 
year.  In  view  of  the  ap- 
parent inability  of  the 
world  to  settle  Us  prob-- 
lems,  this  may  be  the 
best  solution  after  all. 


Cross  Envelope  Puree 


The  Mark  Cross  advertising  is  notable  for  the  element 
of  ''atmosphere''  expressed  by  the  trademark,  the  head  line 
and  the  epigram  and  carried  on  through  the  entire  layout. 


72  Making  Advertisements 

ship.  And  there  is  no  more  vital  phase  of  ad- 
vertising than  the  study  and  practice  of  creating 
atmospheric  effects. 

If  the  three  elements  of  an  advertisement  are 
the  copy,  the  picture  and  the  type,  then  the 
term  which  includes  all  three  —  the  layout  — 
is  of  first  consequence  in  achieving  atmosphere. 

The  looks  of  an  advertisement  are  like  the 
looks  of  a  salesman.  There  was  a  day  when 
merchants  cared  very  little  how  their  salespeo- 
ple dressed  and  acted.  Today  there  are  fixed 
standards  of  clothes  and  manners. 

Similarly,  there  was  a  time  when  mighty  little 
thought  was  given  to  the  choice  and  arrange- 
ment of  type,  to  the  balance  of  picture  and  print, 
to  the  illustrations,  technique  and  the  copy's 
character.  But  today  it  is  realized  that  first 
impressions  are  even  more  vital  in  an  advertise- 
ment than  in  the  appointments  of  a  shop. 

A  clever  salesman  can  win  you  around  even 
though  you  may  be  unfavorably  impressed  by 
his  store,  when  you  first  enter  it.  But  if  an  ad- 
vertisement's appearance  repels  you,  or  even 
fails  to  attract  you,  the  advertiser  has  lost  his 
opportunity  with  you  once  and  for  all. 

A  famous  merchant  sums  up  the  duties  of  his 


Atmosphere  73 

advertisements  in  this  order:  Be  seen,  be  read, 
be  believed,  be  convincing. 

If  a  manufacturer  of  vs^renches  were  to  choose 
a  fastidious  face  of  type,  associate  it  with  a 
dainty  border  and  a  delicate  drawing,  your 
first  glance  at  his  advertisement  would  say  to 
you :  '^  This  must  be  an  advertisement  of  a  sachet 
powder." 

And  no  matter  how  vigorous  and  man-to-man 
his  argument  might  be,  you  would  refuse  to  be- 
lieve that  it  was  selling  wrenches.  And  you 
would  be  right;  it  wouldn't  sell  them. 

Every  business,  no  matter  how  young  or  how 
old,  has  a  personality.  To  catch  the  spirit  of 
that  personality  and  to  reflect  it  in  words  and 
type  and  picture  is  the  job  of  every  advertise- 
ment. 

If  a  man  is  selling  an  automobile  costing  sev- 
eral thousands  of  dollars,  he  refuses  to  admit  that 
his  car  has  anything  so  plebeian  as  an  engine. 
He  emphasizes  the  little  comforts  of  upholstery 
and  fixtures.  He  gets  you  into  a  luxurious 
frame  of  mind  when  you  see  his  advertisement 
just  as  he  does  when  you  enter  his  salesroom. 

In  his  advertising  he  does  it  by  using  color 
pages  in  the  magazines  where  he  shows  you  the 


74  Making  Advertisements 


exquisite  work  of  the  best  available  artists.  His 
car  is  incidental.  The  foreground,  peopled  by 
the  idle  rich,  may  be  a  club  window  or  a  country 
club  lawn  or  a  famous  church. 

His  message  may  be  confined  to  a  dozen  words 
or  even  no  words  at  all  —  just  atmosphere. 

He  is  not  like  the  merchant  who  must  go  into 
details  by  telling  you  whether  a  bookcase  will 
fill  a  certain  space  in  your  library,  how  a  new 
article  of  office  equipment  will  simplify  your  or- 
ganization's routine,  or  whether  a  new  kitchen 
device  is  simple  enough  to  be  mastered  by  a 
somewhat  skeptical  Finn.  He  needn't  even 
mention  the  price.  Even  King  Richard  HI  said, 
^'  My  Kingdom  for  a  horse!  "  —  which  is  prob- 
ably the  highest  price  on  record  for  one  good 
dependable  steed.  But  the  maker  of  high 
quality  motor  cars  flatters  you  by  taking  it  for 
granted  that  a  question  of  a  few  hundreds  this 
way  or  that  will  make  no  difference  to  you,  just 
as  he  asks  you  to  take  it  for  granted  that  he  has 
put  under  the  hood  an  engine  that  will  run. 

There  is  an  old  saying  in  advertising  —  that 
nothing  can  be  said  about  a  25-cent  cigar  which 
has  not  already  been  said  about  a  5-cent  cigar. 
If  you  descend  to  superlatives  in  selling  a  prod- 


@ 

/^*^ 

^4 

FLANNEL 

IT  IS  THE  PRIVILEGE  OF  FINCH  LEY  TO 
ANNOUNCE  THAT  A  LIMITED  NUMBER 
OF  SUITS  HAVE  BEEN  DEVELOPED  IM 
FLANNEL  OF  THE  TONE  AND  DISTINC- 
TION WHICH  ONE  IS  INCLINED  TO  ASSO- 
CIATE WITH  ENGLISH  GARMENTS  DE- 
VOTED TO  LOUNGE  AND  COUNTRY  USAGE. 

CUSTOM  FINISH  WITHOUT 
THE  ANNOYANCE  OF  A  TRY-ON 

READY-  TO- PUT  ON 
TAILORED  A  T  FASHION  PARIC 

Style  Brochure  mailed  on  regurst 


wm^m\im 


SWo^t  46th.  Street 
NEW  YORK 


An  extraordinary  instance  of  the  way  that  words  can  create  a  picture. 
Robert  Mears,  Jr.,  has  made  the  Finchley  advertising  look  like  fashion  and 
sound  like  fashion. 


76  Making  Advertisements 

uct  of  real  quality,  you  find  that  the  maker  of 
inferior  merchandise  has  been  there  first.  So 
the  strongest  way  you  can  convey  an  impression 
of  supreme  merit  is  by  inference  —  by  atmos- 
phere. The  man  whose  merchandise  falls  in 
the  class  below  yours  may  employ  many  of  the 
devices  of  design  which  you  also  use,  but  he 
doesn't  dare  give  as  little  information. 

But  atmosphere  is  not  confined  to  those  who 
buy  the  art  work  of  the  Michael  Angelos  of  our 
time.  Atmosphere  is  not  merely  a  question  of 
a  four-page  color-insert  describing  and  pictur- 
ing the  beauty  of  a  pipe  organ  in  the  home  of  a 
millionaire. 

Obviously  the  test  of  good  advertising,  from 
the  standpoint  of  atmosphere,  is  whether  it  is 
in  character  with  the  product  which  it  seeks  to 
sell. 

Atmosphere  can  be  employed  in  selling  per- 
fume or  china  or  rugs  or  kitchen  sinks  or  vacuum 
cleaners  or  fountain  pens  or  hosiery  or  collars 
or  magazines  or  refrigerators  or  candy  or  pro- 
hibition drinks  —  anything  that  people  want. 
By  the  endless  combination  of  blocks  of  type, 
white  space,  appropriate  pictures  and  borders, 
it  is  possible  to  convey  to  the  reader  at  a  glance 


A  $10,000 
Mistake 


CLIENT  for  whom 
we  had  copied  a 
necklace  of  Ori- 
ental Pearls,  seeing  both 
necklaces  before  her, 
said :  Well,  the  resemblance 
is  remarkabky  but  this  is 
mine! 

Then  she  picked  up  ours! 


T     E     C     L     A 

398    Fifth    Avenue,    New    York 
10  Rue  de  la  Paix,  Paris 


In  his  copy  for  Tecla  Pearls,  Frank  Irving  Fletcher  has  actually  put  the 
burden  of  proof  on  the  oyster. 


yS  Making  Advertisements 

as  accurate  an  impression  of  the  product's  char- 
acter as  he  could  get  from  a  five-minute  selling 
talk  by  an  expert  salesman.  Advertising's  ne- 
cessity has  been  the  mother  of  its  invention;  if 
it  has  only  the  flash  of  an  eye  in  which  to  create 
its  atmosphere  it  will  do  it  in  that  instant  —  if 
it  is  good  advertising. 

There  are  some  people,  of  course,  who  want 
you  to  give  them  artichokes  instead  of  cabbage 
and  want  it  publicly  announced  that  they  are 
getting  artichokes.  Secretly  they  may  prefer 
cabbage,  but  they  like  to  have  people  think  that 
they  wear  gardenias  to  business.  Those  people 
keep  in  mind  constantly  what  the  neighbors  say. 
They  like  the  idea  of  getting  away  with  some- 
thing. They  will  reject  a  good  piece  of  mer- 
chandise for  a  poorer  one  if  the  poorer  one  has 
points  of  resemblance  to  a  much  higher  priced 
piece  of  merchandise.  There  are  several  ex- 
amples of  this  in  the  motor  car  world. 

But  society  advertising  which  talks  like  a 
middle-class  Londoner  fools  very  few  people. 
In  America  handkerchiefs  are  still  worn  in 
pockets.  Perhaps  you  smiled  at  the  story  of  the 
Western  miner  who,  in  despair  at  the  Waldorf 
menu,  ordered  fifty  dollars'  worth  of  ham-and- 


Atmosphere  79 

eggs,  but  in  your  heart  you  admired  him.  The 
only  way  for  a  rough  diamond  to  seem  real  with 
real  people  is  to  be  rough. 

He  wanted  to  buy  his  ham-and-eggs  at  the 
place  where  he  understood  they  sold  the  best 
ham  and  the  best  eggs.  Merchants  realized  this 
human  trait.  A  certain  concern  once  adver- 
tised a  $350  watch.  Only  a  half  dozen  of  them 
were  made.  They  weren't  intended  to  sell. 
But  the  fact  that  this  company  could  make  a 
watch  worth  $350  sold  hundreds  of  $35  watches. 
A  well-known  hat  concern  advertised  a  $25  felt 
hat  —  not  because  it  would  be  bought  but  be- 
cause it  would  make  its  $5  hats  seem  much  more 
valuable. 

In  selling  to  the  masses,  Marshall  Field  &  Co. 
recognize  this,  as  you  will  see  from  this  article 
appearing  in  Printers'  Ink: 

"  To  get  atmosphere  and  contrast,  Marshall 
Field  &  Co.  give  prominent  display  to  expensive 
articles  taking  valuable  space  which  would  sell 
directly  much  greater  quantities  of  popular 
merchandise. 

"  That  is  why  we  displayed,  in  our  most  valu- 
able window  during  the  last  August  fur  sale  a 
$7500  Hudson  sable  coat;  that  is  why  we  have 


8o  Making  Advertisements 

displayed  and  sold  men's  cravats  as  high  as  $10; 
$4000  bedroom  sets,  $4500  dining  room  sets, 
$10,000  rugs,  a  $25,000  painting,  $2400  Cheney 
phonographs,  $85  ready-to-wear  suits  for  men, 
$25  hats  for  men,  $35,000  pearl  necklaces,  china 
service  plates  at  $3000  a  dozen.  People  reason 
that  if  a  store  carries  merchandise  like  this  the 
proportionate  quality  must  exist  in  lower  priced 
articles. 

^'  Manufacturers  and  retailers  of  quality  mer- 
chandise with  an  appeal  to  a  limited  market  are 
often  confronted  with  the  problem  of  how  far 
they  can  go  in  their  ^  Classy '  class  appeal. 
They  are  afraid  of  shooting  over  the  heads  of 
their  audiences. 

"  The  success  of  Ivory  Soap,  Lux,  Community 
Silver,  Arrow  Collars  and  other  marketers  of 
low-priced  merchandise  in  creating,  by  adver- 
tising, an  atmosphere  of  ^  class '  we  find  paral- 
leled in  our  own  store.  We  couldn't  get  the 
volume  we  do  entirely  on  '  class '  merchandise. 
Conversely,  we  couldn't  get  the  desirable  ^  bread 
and  butter  '  business  without  the  influence  of  the 
*  class.'  In  other  words,  Mrs.  Jones  likes  to 
trade  where  Mrs.  Lake-Shore-Drive  buys,  and 
Mrs.  Lake-Shore-Drive  comes  here  because  she 


,  ^ 

"3 

9^ 

w 

<3 

^- 

CO 

-^ 

^ 

■^ 

^ 

'v, 

"a 

_'^ 

~2 

o 

■f^ 

■Pi, 

S 

•(i. 

« 

^ 

o 

"^ 

~s; 

5^ 

Q 

o 

?s 

§ 

•^ 

?s 

^ 

Atmosphere  8i 

gets  merchandise  which  is  in  many  cases  better 
than  that  produced  elsewhere,  plus  ^  Field  Ser- 
vice.' " 

The  people  who  most  thoroughly  realize  the 
importance  of  atmosphere  in  advertisements  are 
those  who  are  selling  high-priced  merchandise. 
To  them  ''  atmosphere  "  means  only  "  refined 
atmosphere  "  just  as  to  them  the  word  '^  quality  " 
means  only  '^  high  quality."  In  a  play  about 
life  in  the  slums,  the  atmosphere  may  be  squalid. 
And  if  you  ask  a  wrong-headed  salesman  about 
his  competitor's  goods  you  will  find  that  quality 
may  be  poor.  But  sellers  of  high-priced  mer- 
chandise look  only  at  the  bright  side  when  they 
speak  of  atmosphere  and  quality. 

So  they  have  devised  a  technique  of  their  own 
in  copy,  picture  and  type.  To  many  people  it  is, 
just  as  it  probably  always  will  be,  incomprehen- 
sible, especially  in  pictures. 

Why,  they  ask,  should  we  have  this  race  of  flat- 
chested  young  men  with  vacant  stares,  whose 
chins  are  too  small  and  hats  are  too  large?  Why 
should  they  prowl  their  way  through  the  pages 
of  magazines  and  newspapers,  driving  their  mo- 
tor-cars, smoking  their  cigarettes,  sipping  their 
drinks     and  —  most     of     all  —  wearing     their 


82 


Making  Advertisements 


clothes  with  such  an  air  of  being  bored  with 
life? 


THAT      IS     ALL 

Like  the  alimony  which-  is  the  last 
link  between  an  incompatible  couple, 
the  only  thing  which  our  men*s  hand- 
tailored  clothes  have  in  common  with 
machine -made  clothes  is  the  price. 
Men's  Suits  ^25  to  ^$,  Overcoats,  ^so  to  ^8$. 


FIFTH  AVENUE 
J^en's  Shops,  2  to  8  West  38*  Street— Street  Level 


You  probably  won't  find  many  people  who  actually  look  like  this,  but  they 
are  the  symbols  of  fashion.  By  his  brilliant  and  sophisticated  copy  Frank 
Irving  Fletcher  has  been  able  to  throw  around  the  Franklin  Simon  adver- 
tising a  note  of  well-bred  style  without  foppishness. 


And  why  should  their  wives,  sisters  and  sweet- 
hearts glance  up  at  us  from  the  printed  pages 
like  startled  fawns,  covering  their  chins  with  furs 
or  uncovering   their   throats   with    pearls  —  so 


Atmosphere  83 

slim-fingered,  so  marvelously  coiffed,  and  so  dia- 
phanously  gowned? 

Obviously  they  are  symbols.  They  stand  for 
what  is  technically  called  class.  And  of  course 
there  are  very  few  type-faces  worthy  of  associa- 
tion with  this  race.  They  like  the  restraint  and 
stateliness  of  Bodoni,  the  delicacy  of  Kennerley 
or  its  sisters  Goudy  and  Cloister  Old  Style  and 
at  times  they  are  in  the  mood  for  the  absolute 
purity  of  Caslon  Oldstyle  No.  471. 

Occasionally  they  go  wild  —  reaching  out  af- 
ter some  of  the  decorative  types  whose  origina- 
tors must  have  set  themselves  the  task  of  design- 
ing the  most  intricate  possible  network  of  fine 
lines.  Certainly  they  never  could  have  intended 
their  handiwork  to  be  read. 

In  a  word,  the  constant  effort  for  effects  some- 
times lays  itself  open  to  the  suspicion  of  intro- 
ducing a  false,  not  to  say  a  falsetto,  note.  Par- 
ticularly is  this  true  in  the  words,  the  copy,  that 
accompanies  atmospheric  designs. 

There  is  a  certain  kind  of  copy  concerning  it- 
self with  fashions  which  has  developed  a  lan- 
guage all  its  own.  It  is  the  direct  lingual  de- 
scendant of  the  London  merchants  who  adver- 
tised that  they  were  purveyors  of  everything 


84  Making  Advertisements 

from  top  hats  to  marmalade  to  His  Majesty  the 
King. 

In  its  place,  and  when  employed  for  the  right 
purpose,  copy  of  this  sort  has  its  legitimate  use. 

A  Fifth  Avenue  jeweler  whose  name  is  known 
all  over  the  world  may  put  that  name  in  the  cen- 
ter of  a  page  of  white  space,  adding  nothing  ex- 
cept the  words  ''  Diamonds  and  pearls "  and  the 
phrase  "  Purchases  may  be  made  by  mail."  But 
there  is  nothing  more  absurd  than  a  piece  of  copy 
which  is  only  fine  writing.  Quiller-Couch  has 
a  splendid  piece  of  advice  for  this: 

"  Whenever  you  feel  an  impulse  to  perpetrate 
a  piece  of  exceptionally  fine  writing,  obey  it  — 
whole-heartedly  —  and  delete  it  before  sending 
your  manuscript  to  press.  Murder  your  dar- 
lings.'' 

A  man  runs  a  shop  selling  women's  clothes  at 
popular  prices.  One  day  his  ambition  soars  and 
he  decides  to  become  more  exclusive.  Some  one 
digs  up  an  antique  French  border  design  for 
him,  has  his  name  lettered  by  hand,  and  changes 
the  headline  which  used  to  read  ''  Prices  Slashed 
on  Ladies'  Suits "  to  "  Unusual  Price  Conces- 
sions in  Women's  Apparel." 

And  yet  the  appalling  fact  about  advertising 


Atmosphere  85 

is  that  it  can  and  does  change  the  character  of 
an  establishment.     Just  when  you  decide  that 
the  sort  of  quality  copy  used  by  a  merchant  is  en- 
tirely out  of  keeping  with  his  business,  you  wake 
up  to  find  that  it  has  completely  changed  the 
class  of  his  trade  and  that  he  is  moving  his  shop 
to  a  better  neighborhood  where  his  new  custo- 
mers prefer  to  shop.     The  history  of  many  lead- 
ing merchants  in  our  large  cities  is  the  strongest 
proof   of    advertising   power   as    a   democratic 
force.     It  has  lifted  countless  struggling  mer- 
chants out  of  the  sidestreets  and  onto  the  boule- 
vards.    Its  atmosphere  can  crystallize  the  ideal 
of  a  business  more  accurately  than  many  spoken 
words. 


V 
SINCERITY 


SINCERITY 

All  the  sparkle  and  persuasion  and  drive  of 
good  advertising  copy  comes  when  the  person 
who  wrote  it  was  so  filled  with  belief  in  his  sub- 
ject that  he  couldn't  wait  to  get  his  enthusiasm 
down  on  paper.  If  there  is  one  quality  that 
least  can  be  spared  from  copy  it  is  sincerity. 

A  well-known  advertising  agent  had  just 
finished  an  informal  talk  before  a  group  of  news- 
paper representatives  and  had  thrown  the  meet- 
ing open  for  questions. 

"  What  do  you  consider  the  most  important 
thing  in  copy?  "  asked  one  man. 

Without  hesitating  a  second,  the  agent  re- 
plied : 

^'Sincerity!" 

You  can  strip  an  advertisement  of  almost  any- 
thing else  —  beauty  of  form,  clarity  of  expres- 
sion, taste  of  arrangement,  excellence  of  idea  — 
and  still  you  will  have  something  left,  something 
that  will  reach  out  and  grasp  people,  if  your 
advertisement  rings  true. 

89 


90  Making  Advertisements 

People  often  point  out  the  great  variation  be- 
tween the  advertisements  of  two  successful  ad- 
vertisers. 

''  Which  one  is  good  advertising?  "  they  ask. 
"  This  one  violates  every  standard  of  taste  and 
yet  there  is  something  about  it  that  gives  it  as 
much  power  as  that  beautiful  advertisement." 

Sincerity  is  the  reason.  Two  advertisements 
may  be  as  different  as  a  subway  guard  and  an 
Episcopal  bishop  and  yet  each  one  will  make  its 
appeal.  Advertisements  are  like  people.  If  a 
man  is  sincere  you  can  forgive  him  almost  any- 
thing. One  salesman  comes  to  see  you  with  a 
manner  that  is  so  abrupt  or  so  shy  that  your  first 
impulse  is  to  tell  him  to  go  out  again  into  the  rain 
which  drove  him  into  your  office.  And  yet  if 
he  is  sincere,  if  he  honestly  believes  in  what  he  is 
selling,  and  you  give  him  half  a  chance,  he  will 
probably  leave  as  good  an  impression  with  you 
as  the  man  whose  manners  carry  a  high  polish. 

It's  equally  true  that  a  lack  of  sincerity  can 
ruin  the  best  materials  ever  used  in  the  construc- 
tion of  an  advertisement.  Take  a  drawing  made 
by  an  artist  whose  technique  is  faultless  but  who 
has  the  idea  that  he  is  going  slumming  whenever 
he  dips  into  commercial  art,  combine  it  with  a 


THE    GLORY    OF    THE    UPWARD    PATH 

A«  iold  in  the.  letters  of  men  who  are  travelling  it 


Two  pafiis  bepB  at  the  bottom 
of  the  hiD  of  life. 

One  of  them  winds  about  the  base, 
thru  years  of  routine  and  drudgery. 
Now  and  then  it  rises  over  a  Itnoll 
representing  a  little  higher  plane  of 
living  made  possible  by  hard  earned 
progress;  but  its  route  is  slow  and 
difficult  and  bordered  with  inon> 
otony. 

The  other  mounts  slowly  at  first, 
but  rapidly  afterwards,  into  posi- 
tions where  every  problem  is  new 
and  stirring,  and  where  the  regards 
are  comfort,  and  travel  and  freedom 
from  all  fear- 
Let  us  glance  for  a  moment  at'the 
letters  men  write  who  ere  treading 
this  fortunate  path.  Such  letters 
come  to  the  Alexander  Hamilton 
Institute  in  every  mail;  they  are 
the  most  thrilling  feature  of  the 
Institute's  business  day. 

Exultant  letters  they  are,  full  of 
hope  and  happiness;  the  bulletins 
of  progress  on  the  upward  path. 

My  income  ha*  inereatei 
7 SO  per  cent 

HERE  is  one  from  an  official  in 
the  largest  enterprise  ,of  its 
kind  in  the  world.  "In  the  past 
eiglit  years  my  income  haa  in- 
creased 750%.  The  Course  has- 
been  the  foundation  in  my  business 
training.". 

Another  from  an  officer  in  a 
successful  manufacturing  company: 
"Last  Friday  was  a  happy  day  for 


me;  I  wa-t  elected  a  member  of  the  heighu  of  executive  responaibiliQ* 

Board  of  Directors  of  this  company,  and  reward  which  lie  at  the  end  of 

The  day  when  I  enrolled  with  the  the  upward  path. 
Alexander  Hamilton  Institute  wa* 

the  turning  point  in  my  career  "  "«»  «'•  paying  uhethef  yon 

profit  or  nof_ 

Whole   volumes   could   be   filled  __  ^ .  . 

with  letters  of  this  sort.    A  few  of  V  '^'^  *°"'f  ""."«*  '"  ."r  '^'T 

them    have    been    printed    in    the  I  »rt  payrg  for  bu.me«  tr..n.ng  irtmto 

Institute's  book  entitled   "Forging  .    y^  ^  i^  <"  <^     Nevvthek-  U 

Ahead  In  Business."    Thousands  of  "V?'^  .      ^^    r     _.  ^. 

others    are    open    records    in    the         ^^  "1  **'1"«  *"  '^"^ -l.T*^! 

Institute's  ofW  P™?""  ***".  '"*  ""^^  "I'?*"^^  "P'** 

•od  nif*:  paying  in  opportvuciet  tut  pu* 

In  the  past  ten  years  the  Alexan-  you  by  becau«c  you  h»v«  netsh*  traiaJot 

der  Hamilton  Institute  has  enrolled  or  «l(-cooi6<l»c«  to  retch  cut  »i>d  ft»»p 

thousands  of  men    in   its   Modern  tbtm;   paying  ia  ye»f»  o(  routine  (crvlot 

Business  Course  and  Service;   and  when  you  might  enjoy  the  fiiniulu»»ndlh« 

to-day  the  monthly   rate  of   enrol-  gloty  et  the  upward  p«th< 
ment   is  more  than-three  times  as  e     j  #      tie    -»  ..  it..^j 

great  as  ever  before.  •*«'*«  '*'     Forging  ^htt 

in  Butinet^' 

They  ere  men  uho  art  rpHOUSANDS  ot  iwa.  h»v«  tak«a  th« 
mofing  up  I   tnt  d<£nite  tta>  up.  by  seeding  for 

*  the  I  lA  page  book  which  the  AWander 

THESE     were     men,    not     boys,  Hamilton      lt»titute     pnbli»bes     cntitled- 

1  .1  11  J    -    ft.  •  "Forging  Ahead  In  Bnunos-"     It  eontatna 

wien      they      enrolled.      Their  ,x»rth    while    bu«nea.    information,    and 

average  age  was  thirty-three  years,  letter*  from  men  in  poiiitoiu  eaetly  timilar 

They  had  already  made  their  start  !?  >:™fLJ'>"ilJ*?' '^'iJi'^ 
*  '    -             ^t                                t  t  •  tion;    there  i*  a  c^'py  'of  wtry  tnth  of 
robustness;  they  were  succewful  m  ^ouapu»po«.    Send  for  tw  copy  «(«Uy. 
one  department — m  selhng,  or  ac- 
counting, in  production,  or  banking,  Akuitdcr    Hamilton    InatltuU 

mJ^^I^nf'  '^  ''"'**"^  *"  **^"  »*K^ru»        •fc.y-ko.,    /pv 

management-  ._«—-—••«»•«-»«.,.,  ^c^* 

The  Alexander  HamiltM  Insti-  i^S^'iis'SiSl"'"*"**  "'''^-  1^ 
tute  rounded  out  their  knowledge  by 
giving  them  the  fundamentals  of  all 
departments  of  business.     Few  men 

in  biisiness  ever  gain  that  all-round  ■« 

knowledge:  so  few  that  thexhmand  ^ 
for  them  is  always  in  excess, of  the 
supply. 

They  are  the  men  who  reach  the  po.'i';""' 


Thf  narrative  form  of  copy  has  made  a  place  for  itself  in  advertising  which 
calls  for  direct  and  immediate  action  on  the  part  of  the  reader.  Bruce  Bar- 
ton finds  that  in  the  Alexander  Hamilton  Institute  advertisements,  a  very 
effective  method  is  the  human,  inspirational  style  that  stirs  such  a  response 
from  his  editorials  and  articles  in  the  magazines. 


92  Making  Advertisements 

few  vapid  words  by  a  writer  whose  chief  interest 
in  the  advertisement  is  to  finish  it  before  lunch, 
have  these  words  put  into  type  and  the  two  ele- 
ments arranged  by  a  designer  whose  life  is 
spoiled  because  he  didn't  think  of  making  Type 
Charts  before  Ben  Sherbow  did,  and  what  do 
you  have?  A  pleasing  advertisement,  perhaps, 
representing  several  hundreds  of  dollars  in  its 
manufacture  and  several  thousands  in  its  prog- 
ress to  the  public  eye  through  magazine  space, 
but  without  a  flicker  of  spirit  and  life  and  what 
has  been  latterly  called  jazz. 

There  ought  to  be  something  about  an  adver- 
tisement as  contagious  as  the  measles.  Without 
sincerity  an  advertisement  is  no  more  contagious 
than  a  sprained  ankle. 

Measure  the  advertisements  that  you  see  by 
this  standard  of  sincerity.  See  how  this  quality 
permeates  the  familiar  campaigns  that  have  been 
swinging  along  at  a  successful  gait  from  one  sea- 
son to  another.  And  see  how  it  is  absent  from 
those  campaigns  which  seem  to  be  forever  start- 
ing, stopping,  taking  fresh  starts  and  then  dying 
out  altogether  just  when  they  appear  to  be  almost 
ready  to  go. 

What  is  this  quality"  called  sincerity  and  how 


im^mmi^^f 


Apple  Pie 

Good  Apple  Pie  is  making  the  Hotel  Belleclaire.  77th  St.  and 
Broadway,  famous.     Who  would  think  such  a  thing  was  possible? 

You  see  how  important  it  is  to  look  after  the  smallest  detaiU.in 
hotel  managemeat. 

Good  pastry  cooks  and  good  cooks  b  other  lines  axe  big  helps  in 
making  a  hotel  popular. 

The  Apple  Pie  made  is  so  good  that  families  for  blocks  around  die 
Belleclaire  telephone  9100  Schuyler — "Please  send  us  an  Apple  Pie." 

It  is  sent     And  wherever  it  goes  it  makes  friends  for  the  hotel. 

The  Belleclaire  is  not  in  the  bakery  business,  but  it  is  a  Service 
Hotel.  It  sends  whole  meals  to  families  living  in  ^e  neighborhood 
whenever  they  want  them. 

It  is  an  accommodation,  that's  all — but  it  pays  to  be  accpmmodat' 
ing.  It  certainly  pays  in  adding  to  reputation,  if  it  does  not  pay  in 
any  other  way. 

Here  is  a  story  of  a  Belleclaire  Apple  Pie  sent  to  a  man's  home  at 
1 0  o'clock  last  Sunday  night  The  man  himself  told  it  in  the  presence 
of  the  writer  in  the  Belleclaire  Barber  Shop  last  Monday  morning: 

"We  were  motoring  yesterday  and  had  a  late  dinner.  We  did  not 
I  think  we  would  want  any  Sunday  ni^t  supper,  but  around  1 0  o'clock 
we  felt  hungry,  so  I  telephoned  the  Belleclaire  to  send  a'roui^  some 
Swiss  cheese  sandwiches,  made  of  rye  bread,  and  an  Apple  Pie. 

"And,  say,  that  Apple  Pie  was  great!  The  pastry  cook  %vho 
makes  it  should  be  decorated  with  the  Iron  Cross.  He  must  have  spent 
a  great  part  of  his  life  in  an  apple  orchard.  He  certainly  knows  what 
to  do  with  apples  in  an  Apple  Pie. 

It  must  be  good  Apple  Pie,  or  who  could  eat  it  at  10  o'clock  at 

ni^t.  following  a  suRsly  of  Swiss  cheese  «andwiches,  and  live  to  tell 

the  tale  .the  next  day? 

The  other  food  articles  served  at  the  B^eclake  are  just  as  good 
as  the  Apple  Pie. 

Rotert  D.  Blackman. 

Manager,  Hotel  Belleclaire. 


//  there  is  one  quality  that  stands  out  in  William  C.  Freeman's  copy  it  is 
sincerity.  This  advertisement  caused  hundreds  of  New  Yorkers  to  send 
around  to  the  Hotel  Belleclaire  for  apple  pies. 


94  Making  Advertisements 

can  it  be  obtained  for  an  advertisement?  Pres- 
ently a  number  of  suggestions  will  be  offered, 
some  of  which  may  be  found  useful  in  achieving 
sincerity.  But  this  is  one  underlying  general 
truth  which  may  well  be  regarded  before  enter- 
ing upon  a  detailed  consideration: 

Somewhere  at  the  very  heart  of  every  success- 
ful campaign  is  some  individual  who  radiates 
his  enthusiasm  for  the  product  and  the  idea  be- 
hind it.  He  refuses  to  be  satisfied  with  less  than 
his  own  mental  picture  of  what  the  advertising's 
reflection  of  that  idea  shall  be.  He  fights  for 
his  belief.  And  eventually  some  of  his  own  fire 
creeps  into  the  copy. 

Whether  it  is  only  a  smouldering  glow  or  a 
raging  blaze  usually  depends  upon  this  individ- 
ual's distance  from  the  finished  advertisements. 
If  he  IS  inside  of  the  advertiser's  own  organiza- 
tion and  if  he  must  pass  along  his  enthusiasm 
through  three  or  four  intermediaries  until  it 
reaches  a  copy  man  hidden  away  in  the  dark 
recesses  of  an  agency's  service  department  a  lot 
of  the  original  heat  will  have  cooled. 

If  he  happens  to  be  the  head  of  a  manufactur- 
ing business  and  he  gives  his  thoughts  to  his 
sales  manager  who  relays  them  to  his  advertising 


Sincerity  95 

manager  who  passes  them  on  to  an  agency's  ex- 
ecutive and  the  agency's  representative  deals  out 
the  ideas  to  the  head  of  a  copy  department  and 
the  copy  chief  assigns  the  job  to  one  of  his  bright 
young  men,  what  chance  has  enthusiasm  to  sur- 
vive? 

The  campaign,  in  that  case,  is  actually  written 
by  a  man  who  is  lucky  if  he  even  gets  a  sample  of 
the  product.  Ordinarily  his  greatest  source  of 
information  is  stale  "  literature."  And  it's  one 
of  a  dozen  jobs  that  pass  over  his  desk  in  the 
course  of  a  week  —  that  and  nothing  more. 

As  you  cut  out  each  stage  of  separation  from 
the  enthusiasm  to  the  man  who  writes  the  cam- 
paign, you  increase  the  chances  of  finding  sin- 
cerity in  the  finished  result.  And  that,  after  all, 
is  suggestion  number  one. 

The  head  of  a  business  wrapped  up  in  the  suc- 
cess of  his  enterprise  is  able  to  communicate  his 
enthusiasm  to  those  associated  with  him.  He 
honestly  believes  that  in  making  its  product  the 
company  is  serving  its  country  more  valuably 
than  any  other  business  on  earth.  He  isn't  try- 
ing to  fool  anybody  —  not  even  himself.  He  has 
thought  over  this  thing  so  intensively  that  he  sees 
in  it  possibilities  which  no  one  else  imagines. 


g6  Making  Advertisements 

It  is  said  that  the  Priority  Board  in  Washing- 
ton was  approached  by  the  representatives  of 
every  sort  of  industry  —  men  who  manufactured 
everything  from  steam  shovels  to  candy  and 
from  locomotives  to  perfume  —  all  of  them  en- 
thusiastically declaring  that  their  industries  were 
essential.  It  cannot  be  claimed  that  all,  or  any 
great  share  of  them,  were  trying  to  fool  the  Gov- 
ernment. They  were  simply  sincere  business 
men,  so  engrossed  in  their  lines  of  business  that 
they  could  not  conceive  of  greater  importance 
attaching  itself  to  any  other  industry.  To  each 
one  it  seemed  imperative  that  he  be  permitted  to 
go  his  way,  manufacturing  his  product  and  thus 
helping  to  win  the  war. 

Because  men  of  this  type  are  scattered  through 
American  business,  this  country  is  particularly 
rich  in  successes  built  in  a  remarkably  short 
time.  Men  are  willing  to  make  tremendous 
sacrifices  of  time,  energy  and  personal  comfort 
because  they  believe  in  a  business  so  sincerely 
that  they  want  to  save  every  possible  minute  in 
telling  others  about  it.  Men  like  this,  when 
they  understand  advertising,  have  the  patience 
and  vision  to  use  advertising  effectively.  And 
they  insist  that  in  their  advertising  shall  be  that 


Sincerity  97 

same   fire   of   sincerity  which   they   themselves 

feel. 

A  man  like  that  is  an  advertising  man's  most 
valuable  point  of  contact  in  any  organization. 
Too  many  of  the  men  met  in  factories  and  execu- 
tive offices  have  been  so  busy  studying  their  ow^n 
work  that  they  have  gathered  no  grasp  of  the 
business  as  a  whole ;  or  they  have  been  over  the 
same  ground  so  often  that  they  have  ceased  to 
consider  it  exciting.     But  usually  there  is  one 
man  for  whom  the  lustre  hasn't  worn  off.     He 
may  be  the  president  or  the  general  manager. 
He  may  be  the  advertising  manager  or  an  assist- 
ant advertising  manager  or  a  plant  superinten- 
dent or  a  sales  manager.     He  may  be  a  salesman 
—  one  who  has  refused  opportunities  to  do  exec- 
utive work  because  he  has  something  of  the  mis- 
sionary in  him  and  he  loves  to  spread  the  tidings 
of  his  product  among  the  trade.     Whoever  and 
wherever  he  is,  he  is  worth  finding.     For  he  has 
the  spark. 

Occasionally  the  outside  advertising  man  him- 
self is  the  one  who  supplies  the  note  of  sincerity 
that  creates  an  advertising  success.  Looking 
upon  a  business  with  eyes  that  have  not  been 
dimmed  by  disappointment,  he  sees  possibilities 


98  Making  Advertisements 

which  no  one  inside  the  organization  has 
glimpsed.  He  fights  for  his  ideal  of  what  the 
campaign  should  be  and  by  sheer  weight  of  en- 
thusiasm pulls  a  backward  advertiser  to  success 
in  spite  of  himself. 

A  moment  ago  something  was  said  about  sug- 
gestions for  achieving  sincerity  in  advertising. 
That  was  the  wrong  word ;  you  can't  achieve  sin- 
cerity. If  it  isn't  there,  it  can't  be  created.  But 
it  can  be  allowed  to  project  itself  into  advertis- 
ing. The  forces  that  smother  it  can  be  held 
back.  It  can  flourish  and  grow  if  it  has  half  a 
chance. 

One  good  rule  to  follow  is  to  cut  out  most  first 
paragraphs  of  advertising  copy. 

Once  a  young  copy  writer  wrote  a  booklet 
which  had  what  he  considered  a  particularly 
able  beginning.  His  boss  read  the  first  page  and 
then  carefully  drew  his  pencil  through  the  first 
paragraph. 

'^  But  youVe  cut  out  my  whole  introduction," 
the  young  man  protested. 

"  Exactly,"  said  the  boss,  "  you  are  like  an 
acrobat  who  comes  out,  wipes  off  his  hands, 
tosses  away  his  handkerchief,  puts  rosin  on  his 
feet  and  then  starts  to  work.  We  haven't  room 
for  the  preliminaries  in  advertising." 


Sincerity  99 

Very  often  when  a  person  starts  to  write  copy 
he  hasn't  a  very  clear  idea  of  just  how  he  wants 
to  start.  So  he  will  grope  his  way  through  sev- 
eral sentences  and  then,  by  that  exercise,  his 
mind  opens  up  and  he  swiftly  re-states  in  a  sec- 
ond paragraph  exactly  what  he  was  trying  to 
say  at  first.  But  he  forgets  to  cross  out  the  first 
paragraph  which,  after  all,  was  only  practice. 
And  he  is  hurt  when  some  one  says,  "  It  takes  you 
too  long  to  get  into  your  subject." 

Careful  writers  realize  that  if  a  first  para- 
graph isn't  good,  it  doesn't  matter  much  what 
goes  into  the  second  paragraph  because  mighty 
few  people  will  read  that  far. 

Archie  Fowler,  The  Suns  Washington  cor- 
respondent at  the  time  of  his  early  death,  sat  in 
front  of  his  typewriter  one  night  jingling  the 
keys.  He  sat  there  for  forty-five  minutes  with- 
out writing  a  word  and  he  had  just  come  into  the 
New  York  office  after  a  long  trip  with  Mr.  Taft 
who  was  then  President.  And  it  was  within  an 
hour  of  press-time! 

But  when  he  started,  he  stopped  only  long 
enough  to  put  fresh  paper  in  his  typewriter. 
And  in  less  than  an  hour  he  had  written  two 
columns  in  the  style  that  was  all  his  own  —  care- 


lOO  Making  Advertisements 

ful,  accurate,  with  a  grasp  of  his  whole  subject, 
lighted  up  by  revealing,  whimsical  incidents. 
Some  one  who  had  watched  him  said  as  he  fin- 
ished: 

"  Had  a  hard  time  getting  started  tonight, 
didn't  you?  " 

"  I'd  rather  write  a  dozen  columns,"  he  said, 
"  than  one  lead." 

A  third  way  to  leave  the  way  clear  for  sincerity 
in  copy  is  to  keep  out  artificial  tricks  and  super- 
ficial stunts.  There  are  legitimate  devices  which 
make  copy  vivid  and  responsive,  but  the  path 
is  strewn  with  ideas  that  looked  brilliant  and 
weren't,  with  trade  characters  which  warped 
whole  selling  plans,  with  adjectives  upon  which 
thousands  were  spent  before  it  was  found  that 
they  weren't  descriptive,  with  an  attempt  at  con- 
tinuity in  a  series  where  one  or  two  advertise- 
ments were  natural  and  good  and  the  rest  were 
painfully  strained  to  fill  out  the  duration  of  the 
campaign. 

One  of  the  most  spectacular  failures  in  adver- 
tising was  scarcely  an  advertising  failure.  It 
was  a  merchandising  failure.  A  certain  product 
of  doubtful  merit  was  advertised  by  a  trade  char- 
acter —  one  of  the  funniest  and  most  appealing 


REPUTATION 

One  advantage  of  cm- 
ploying  a  contractor  with 
a  reputation  is  that  he  has 
got  to  maintain  on  your 
job  the  reputation. he  has 
made  on  a  hundred  others. 

THOMPSON-STARRETT 
COMPANY 

Building  Construction 


EUCLID 
REVISED! 

The  shortest  distance 
between  two  points  is  the 
Thompson-Starrctt  Com- 
pany, 


THOMPSON-STARRETT 
COMPANY 

Building  Constructloa 


L 


CROWDING 
THE  MOURNERS 

As  an  up-to-date  build- 
ing organization  we  arc 
sometimes  a  little  ahead 
of  time,  like  the  Christ- 
mas magazines  that  come 
out  in  Novcmbcrl 


THOMPSON-STARRETT 
COMPANY 

Building  Constructloo 


DELAY 

We  arc  the  last  place  to 
come  to  for  delay,  but  the 
first  place  to  come  to  to 
avoid  iU 

THOMPSON-STARRETT 
COMPANY 

Building  Construction 


When  New  York  advertisers  speak  of  small-space  copy,  tluy  usually 
mention  the  Thomps on-Star rett  Company's  advertising.  It  is  interesting 
not  for  itself  alone  hut  because  it  was  thf  first  copy  written  by  Frank  Irving 
Fletcher  who  now  writes  a  dozen  conspicuous  campaigns.  Other  specimens 
of  the  extraordinarily  high  standard  of  his  work  are  shown  in  these  pages. 


I02  Making  Advertisements 

characters  that  ever  found  its  way  into  the  pages 
of  newspapers  and  magazines  and  onto  the  bill- 
boards. He  was  a  hit  because  he  typified  a  na- 
tional characteristic.  He  jumped  into  current 
slang.     People  called  their  friends  by  his  name. 

In  fact  he  was  so  clever  that  people  thought  of 
him  and  not  of  the  product  that  he  advertised. 
He  dumbfounded  the  manufacturers  of  his 
product  by  the  volume  of  his  sales.  For  in 
their  heart  of  hearts  they  must  have  known  that 
the  product  wasn't  especially  good. 

They  had  intended  to  improve  the  product  but 
when  the  popular  response  was  so  great  they 
failed  to  see  the  necessity  of  making  the  mer- 
chandise as  good  as  the  advertising.  They 
didn't  realize  that  one  of  the  fundamentals  of 
advertising  is  that  a  product  must  have  merit. 
Advertising  tells  too  many  people  about  a  prod- 
uct; if  it  isn't  good,  somebody  will  find  it  out. 
Advertising,  by  extending  a  product's  acquaint- 
ances, makes  either  friends  or  enemies.  It  all 
depends  upon  the  product's  worth. 

Then  an  astonishing  thing  happened.  They 
stopped  advertising,  believing  that  they  had  won 
their  market.  And  their  sales  flattened  out  al- 
most overnight.     It  is  never  safe  to  stop  consis- 


THE  STORY  OF  RE  VILLON  FURS 


©1918 


Tukalook  and  his  Wife 

THE  Eskimo  trapper  is  honest  and  gentle  but 
primitive  in  his  ways.  He  lives  in  a  snow  hut 
built  of  large  snow  blocks,  which  he  cuts  with  huge 
knives  made  for  the  purpose.  These  snow  knives  are 
among  the  trading  articles  most  in  demand  in  the 
Hudson's  Bay  district.  Field  glasses  are  also  very 
highly  prized,  as  they  enable  the  Eskimo  hunter  to 
see  at  a  distance  the  herds  of  caribou  which  furnish 
his  winter's  meat  supply, 

Mrs.  Tukalook  wears  furs,  and  she  can  skin  very 
expertly  the  animals  her  husband  traps,  but  she 
knows  nothing  of  the  subsequent  processes  by  which 
furs  are  made  into  the  smart  coats  and  sets  offered  to 
Revillon  patrons  in  the  New  York  and  Paris  stores. 


OMvillonJreres 


Fifth  Avenue  at  53rd  Street 


A  great  deal  oj  comment  was  created  by  this  unusual  series  by  the  Churchill- 
Hall  Company. 


I04  Making  Advertisements 

tent  advertising  of  a  good  product;  too  many 
competitors  are  always  just  around  the  corner 
waiting  to  take  your  place  in  the  public's  atten- 
tion. But  when  advertising  is  stopped  on  a  poor 
product,  there  is  nothing  left.  When  you  apply 
a  lighted  cigarette  to  a  toy  balloon  there  can  be 
but  one  result. 

The  advertising  in  this  case  had  been  a  stunt. 
Properly  backed  by  a  good  product  and  con- 
tinued on  an  intelligent  basis,  it  would  have  built 
up  a  satisfactory,  consistent  volume  of  sales. 
But,  because  the  product  wasn't  up  to  standard, 
the  advertising  couldn't  make  repeat  sales.  It 
sold  plenty  of  new  customers  every  day,  but  when 
the  advertising  stopped,  so  did  the  sales.  The 
first  mistake,  of  course,  was  in  spending  so  much 
money  on  an  inferior  product;  for  nothing  will 
make  a  big  success  with  advertising  which 
would  not  make  a  moderate  success  without  ad- 
vertising. The  second  mistake  was  in  giving 
the  advertising  cleverness  but  not  sincerity. 

Clever,  as  it  was,  the  copy  was  not  sincere  be- 
cause there  was  nothing  much  that  could  be  sin- 
cerely said  about  the  product.  So  a  fourth  good 
idea  in  making  sure  of  sincerity  in  copy  is  to 
see  to  it  that  the  product  is  worthy  of  all  the  fine 


Sincerity  105 

things  that  are  said  about  it.  That  was  the  mer- 
chandising failure  in  the  campaign.  Bear  in 
mind  that  merchandising  means  simply  to  trade, 
to  buy  and  sell.  To  buy  something  of  doubtful 
merit  is  merely  stupid.  To  sell  something  of 
doubtful  merit  is  dishonest.  Such  a  funda- 
mental error  in  merchandising  as  to  sell  an  infe- 
rior article  by  pumping  up  the  sales  through 
advertising  is  like  inflating  a  punctured  tire. 
What  you  say  may  be  sound  enough  but  the  sales 
volume  won't  stick  because  there  is  a  leak  in 
quality. 

There  was  another  fault  in  this  campaign. 
The  advertising  was  too  clever.  It  drew  atten- 
tion to  itself  instead  of  to  the  product;  though 
perhaps  that  was  just  as  well  in  this  case  since 
there  might  not  have  been  any  first  sales,  to  say 
nothing  of  repeat  orders,  if  people  had  been  al- 
lowed to  think  too  much  about  the  product. 

As  a  rule,  though,  manufacturers  are  not 
afraid  of  letting  people  think  about  their  prod- 
ucts. In  fact  that  is  the  one  thing  they  most  hope 
to  accomplish  through  their  advertising.  And 
advertising  that  is  too  clever  is  like  a  smart- 
alecky  child.  It  says,  ''Look  at  me!"  And 
most  people  prefer  to  look  the  other  way. 


io6  Making  Advertisements 

Even  when  it  attracts  attention,  it  is  like  an 
actor  who  emphasizes  his  own  eccentricities  so 
strongly  that  you  always  see  the  actor  and  never 
the  play. 

Take  half  a  dozen  of  the  cleverest  slogans  you 
know  —  not  the  most  effective,  but  the  cleverest 
—  and  ask  a  dozen  people  what  these  slogans 
advertise.  You  will  find  that  while  almost 
every  one  remembers  the  slogan,  the  number  of 
people  who  link  it  with  its  product  is  surpris- 
ingly small. 

Often  you  hear  a  person  say: 

"  That  was  a  mighty  clever  advertisement  I 
saw  the  other  day  —  put  out  by  some  cigarette 
concern  —  the  one  that  said  "  —  and  so  on. 
''  What  cigarette  was  that?  "  you  ask.  "  I  don't 
remember  "  is  the  reply.  ''  You  must  have  seen 
it.     It  was  some  cigarette.'' 

They  remember  what  the  advertisement  said 
but  they  forget  what  it  advertised.  The  trick 
caught  their  fancy  but  the  argument  missed  their 
pocketbook. 

But  a  slogan  can  be  clever  and  still  keep  your 
mind  fixed  on  what  it  advertises.  Slogans  like 
"  If  it  isn't  an  Eastman,  it  isn't  a  kodak,"  or 
"Never  say  Dye  —  say  Rit"  have  all  the  de- 


Sincerity  107 

sired  piquancy  and  still  they  never  could  be 
mistaken  for  advertisements  of  anything  other 
than  Kodaks  and  Rit. 

Many  people  still  seem  to  believe  that  attract- 
ing attention  is  the  greatest  function  of  adver- 
tising and  that  even  unfavorable  attention  is 
preferable  to  being  ignored.  They  point  to  the 
Ford  jokes  and  say,  "  Look  how  many  cars  they 
sold!" 

It  is  useless  to  speculate  on  whether  Mr.  Ford 
would  have  sold  more  cars  if  there  had  been  no 
jokes.  But  it  is  safe  to  say  that  the  basis  of  his 
success  was  not  bad  jokes  but  good  engines. 

Perhaps  it  is  fair  to  say  that  any  manufacturer 
who  produces  something  so  good  that  it  outdis- 
tances competition,  for  so  little  that  it  is  within 
the  reach  of  the  many,  is  a  law  unto  himself. 
But  unfortunately  most  advertisers  are  operating 
in  a  highly  competitive  field  and  to  them  it  is  im- 
portant, if  their  advertising  is  to  be  sincere,  that 
they  inspire  respect  rather  than  merriment. 

It  is  not  sufficient  that  they  make  people  talk. 
The  German  people  have  made  a  great  many 
people  talk  about  them  in  the  past  five  years,  but 
it  has  not  advanced  their  position  in  the  esteem 
of  the  world.     If  you  would  let  sincerity  per- 


io8  Making  Advertisements 


vade  your  advertising,  don't  let  people  laugh  at 
you.  Let  them  laugh  with  you  —  or,  better  yet, 
smile  with  you  —  but  ridicule  is  a  mighty  hin- 
drance to  the  respect  that  is  inspired  by  sincerity. 

There  is  a  certain  type  of  copy  which  is  full 
of  pitfalls  for  sincerity.  That  is  copy  which 
takes  the  form  of  dialogue  or  direct  discourse. 
When  an  advertisement  is  written  as  people  are 
supposed  to  talk,  the  danger  signals  should  go 
up. 

''  I  now  have  more  attractive  clothes,  yet  save 
half,"  says  the  headline  of  an  advertisement 
about  lessons  in  dressmaking.  Would  any  wo- 
man ever  say  "  Yet  save  half  "? 

A  golf  ball  advertisement  shows  a  story-book 
Scotchman  saying,  ^'  The  mon  wha  plays  th'  — 
haes  the  honor  at  every  tee." 

What  if  his  opponent  used  the  same  ball? 
Who  would  have  the  honor  then? 

The  conversational  form  doesn't  ring  true  in 
either  case.  One  is  stilted;  the  other  develops 
a  bad  slice  ofif  the  fairway  of  fact. 

If  copy  is  to  talk,  it  must  talk  like  people. 
Many  of  our  magazines  show  Mrs.  Housewife 
entertaining  a  caller  with  a  description  of  the 
household  device  in  the  corner.     She  is  saying: 


Sincerity  109 

"  Yes,  Edith,  like  you  for  years  I  failed  to  see 
the  advantages  of  the  Household  Helper  with 
its  superior  workmanship,  quality  materials,  and 
eight  points  of  advantage.  Then  on  our  wed- 
ding anniversary,  John  brought  it  home  and  now 
I  have  plenty  of  time  for  calling,  shopping,  go- 
ing to  the  movies,  embroidery,  basket-weaving, 
skating,  golf,  playing  the  saxophone  and  read- 
ing snappy  novels." 

People  talk  that  way  — in  advertisements. 
Oh,  yes  they  do.  But  they  shouldn't.  When 
copy  goes  into  the  first  person  it  must  be  as  true 
to  character  in  choice  of  words  and  truth  of 
viewpoint  as  the  lines  of  the  people  in  a  play. 
It  can't  talk  like  a  sales  catalogue  and  still  sound 
natural.  It  can't  drag  in  talking  points  and  still 
be  real.  It  can't  offer  an  argument  that  any  one 
can  shoot  full  of  holes  and  still  be  convincing. 

A  recent  piece  of  recruiting  copy  for  the 
United  States  Army  started  like  this: 

•  When  I  got  out  of  the  Army,  I  raised  my  right 
hand  over  my  derby  and  said,   "  Never   again,   I 

hope  I" 

And  I  am  here  to  state  that  I  was  just  one  of 
about  3,000,000  who  felt  that  — only  stronger. 

It  was  my  privilege  to  kick,  and  believe  me,  I  did. 
I  couldn't  get  out  too  quick  —  I  wanted  a  feather 


no  Making  Advertisements 

bed,    restaurant    food    and    trousers    that    flapped 
around  my  ankles. 

But  now  that  I'm  out,  civil  life  is  not  all  that  we 
cracked  it  up  to  be!  And  the  Army  looks  like  a 
pretty  good  place,  after  all. 

That  was  written  by  an  advertising  man  named 
Tom  Ryan  —  a  former  captain  of  artillery  who 
knew  at  first  hand  what  he  was  writing  about. 
It  rang  true  with  army  men,  officers  and  soldiers 
alike,  and  with  civilians  too.  It  was  in  char- 
acter. It  stuck  to  the  facts.  A  man  who  had 
not  been  in  the  army  could  never  have  written 
that  copy.  There  was  nothing  in  it  that 
could  make  an  ex-doughboy  exclaim:  ''Aw, 
bunk!" 

It  had  the  quality  which  O.  H.  Blackman  calls 
''  reverse  English  "  —  the  strength  of  under- 
statement, the  restraint  which  gives  a  feeling  of 
confidence  and  latent  power. 

It  is  the  quality  which  distinguishes  the  con- 
versation of  S.  Wilbur  Corman  and  which  he 
has  put  into  his  own  copy  and  was  caught  so 
effectively  by  his  associate,  Jim  Adams,  in  the 
Mennen's  Shaving  Cream  campaign. 

Years  ago  it  was  present  in  the  marvelous  ad- 
vertising  copy   written    by    the    late   John    O. 


Listen— 


You  Biggest  City 
in  the  World! 


Always  in  a  hurry—aren't  you?  You 
ire  80  crowded  for  lime  that  you  can 
never  spare  more  than  half  an  hour  to 
watch  a  man  crawl  up  the  (ace  of  a 
skyscraper,  or  to  study  h6w  a  chauffeur 
puts  on  a  new  tire,  or  to  learn  from 
a  window  demonstrator  about  an  auto- 
matic necktie. 

Givt  me  one  minute  and  I'll  show 
you  how  to  enjoy  shaving  every  morn- 
ing for  the  rest  of  your  life.  Isn't  that  a 
more  instructive  use  of  a  minute  than  to 
watch  them  frying  flapjacks  in  a  Childs* 
window? 
The  reason  that  you  find  shaving  so  painful  is  because  you 
rub  half  dissolved.  causUc  soap  into  the  pores,  raising  a  lot  of 
tiny  blood  blisters  which  the  razor  slices  off.    The  trouble  isn't 
tut  your  beard  is  tou&h  or  your  skin  tender  —  your  soaj*  is 
bad  and  your  method  is  wrong. 

Get  a  tube  of  Mennen  Shaving  Cream-'wbich  perfectly 
softens  the  toughest  beard  without  rubbing  in  with  fingers. 
Squeeze  half-an-incb  of  cream  onto  a  brush  that  is  full  of 
cold  water.  Whip  up  a  lathcf  on  tim  point  of  your  chin 
and  spread  gradually  over  the  face,  adding  water  constantly. 
Use  three  Umes  as  much  water  as  any  ordinary  lather  will  carry. 
Work  this  Mennen  lather  in  for  three  minutes  with  the  brush 
only.    Keep  your  fingers  out  of  it. 

Then  enjoy  the  most  glorious  shave  Of  yoof  shaving  earcef. 
Note  afterwards  that  your  face  doesn't  (eel  as  if  someone 
had  rubbed  salt  into  it  but  on  the  contrary  is  smooth  and  free 
from  smart. 
Come  on— New  York— be  •  sport  T 
Give  Mennen'8  a  trial  and  be  not  only  the  biggfest  but  the 
happiest  dty. 


NENNtN  SAUSMAN      ^ 


Jto  Henry  «ayt-''What  1  Uke  aboot  New  York  b  d»»t  it 
rcmiadt  me  of  evenr  odMr  cooatry  town."' 


Sometimes  an  advertiser  thinks  the  public  must  he  flattered.  Wilbur  Gor- 
man and  Jim  Adams  take  New  York  by  the  throat  in  this  piece  of  copy. 
And  they  sell  lot  of  shaving  cream  in  the  process. 


112  Making  Advertisements 

Powers  for  Macbeth  lamp  chimneys.  If  mem- 
ory can  be  trusted,  one  of  those  advertisements 
said :  ^'  I  make  poor  lamp  chimneys,  too.  But  I 
don't  put  my  name  on  them." 

More  and  more  the  desire  for  sincerity  in  ad- 
vertising is  developing  this  quality  of  under- 
statement. Some  one  once  observed  that  noth- 
ing could  be  said  about  a  twenty-five  cent  cigar 
that  had  not  been  said  already  about  a  five  cent 
cigar.  The  day  of  superlatives  has  passed. 
Every  product  can't  be  the  best.  The  careful 
magazines  have  done  wonders  in  not  only  dis- 
couraging the  use  of  superlatives  but  in  actually 
censoring  them  out  of  copy.  Today  copy  must 
be  more  than  hollow  boasting.  Every  product 
has  its  advantages.  They  need  not  be  exclusive. 
One  great  difference  between  advertising  and 
other  forms  of  descriptive  writing  is  that  in  ad- 
vertising you  tell  only  your  own  story.  The 
other  man  may  be  able  to  say  all  that  you  can 
say,  but  you  happen  to  be  paying  for  the  adver- 
tising space  and  so  it  is  your  privilege  to  tell 
your  own  story  and  remain  silent  about  the  other 
man  and  his  product.  And  the  public  associates 
attributes,  which  may  be  common  to  many,  with 
the  business  house  which  most  persistently  and 


Greatest,  Grandest 
and  Finest 

Each  year  advertising  becomes  more  believable  as 
advertisers  get  a  little  older. 

Most  lies  are  told  by  children,  not  with  the  intent 
to  deceive  but  inspired  by  the  seeming  necessity  for 
securing  emphasis. 

The  new  advertiser  wants  to  attract  attention  in  a 
babel  of  voices,  all  demanding  a  hearing. 

So  he  shouts  and  screams  and  bellov/s  with  best  of 
intention  and  with  little  result. 

He  means  no  harm,  but  just  wants  to  be  heard  and 
doesn't  realize  that  his  voice  is  cracking. 

As  he  grows  older,  he  learns  that  red,  after  all,  has 
only  60%  of  the  strength  of  black,  and  that  to  be 
believed  is  more  than  just  to  be  heard. 

Don't  you  agree  that  as  advertising  grows  oldex — 
it  grows  milder  and  stronger? 

Advert'tswg  space  in  the  Butterici  publications 
is  for  salt  hy  accredited  advertising  agencies. 

BUtterick — Publisher 

The  Delineator 
Everybody's  Magazine 

Tvio  dollars  the  vear,  each 


It  would  he  impossible  to  estimate  the  good  done  to  Advertising  by  such 
home-truths  as  these,  fathered  by  Stanley  Latshaw,  and  freely  circulated  in 
many  newspapers  hy  the  Butterick  Publishing  Company. 


114  Making  Advertisements 

emphatically  establishes  its  right  to  own  those 
attributes. 

All  that  advertising  needs  to  do  is  to  show  the 
merchandise,  describe  it  truthfully  and  keep  on 
doing  these  things  —  forever. 

There  is  no  question  but  that  a  first-hand  ac- 
quaintance with  a  piece  of  merchandise  or  an 
idea  that  is  being  sold  will  make  for  greater  sin- 
cerity in  copy.  It  eliminates  the  possibility  of 
the  superficial  treatment  that  is  the  curse  of  too 
much  advertising.  And  yet  there  is  no  reason  to 
assume  that  a  man  cannot  describe  a  sensation 
unless  he  himself  has  experienced  it. 

A  few  years  ago  Stephen  French  Whitman 
wrote  a  remarkable  novel  called  ''  Predestined.'' 
It  told  the  story  of  a  young  New  Yorker's  slide 
downward  through  several  strata  of  society.  A 
writer  for  the  book  pages  of  a  New  York  paper 
asked  Mr.  Whitman,  with  pardonable  hesita- 
tion in  the  light  of  his  hero's  history,  whether  he 
thought  a  man  had  to  go  through  an  experience 
to  describe  it  correctly. 

"  There  was  a  man  named  Flaubert,"  said  Mr. 
Whitman,  ''  who  wrote  a  book  called  Madame 
Bovary.  It  describes  the  feelings  and  thoughts 
of  a  country  doctor's  wife  in  her  unhappy  mar- 


Sincerity  115 

ried  life.  Nothing  could  be  more  intimate  or 
sympathetic  or  photographic.  And  yet  it  is  safe 
to  say  that  Flaubert  was  never  the  unhappily 
married  wife  of  a  country  doctor!  " 

The  idea  of  an  advertising  man  personally  ex- 
periencing the  uses  of  all  the  products  which  he 
advertises  suggests  a  curious  picture.  Imagine 
an  advertising  man  at  his  desk  trying  a  new  pipe 
tobacco  while  he  shaves  with  a  new  safety  razor 
with  one  hand  and  works  out  problems  on  a  new 
calculating  machine  with  the  other.  How 
would  men  ever  be  able  to  write  copy  about  lin- 
gerie and  how  could  women  write  about  cigars? 
Yet  they  do.  Even  advertising  writers  must  be 
assumed  to  have  some  imagination. 


VI 
COMMON    SENSE 


VI 
COMMON    SENSE 

Lawyers  have  their  offices  lined  with  prece- 
dents. They  can  pull  down  calf-skin  volumes 
and  show  you  that  even  as  far  back  as  the  Magna 
Charta  it  was  possible  to  pry  a  client  out  of  jail 
with  nothing  to  work  with  but  a  writ  of  habeas 
corpus.  And  in  common  law  states,  lawyers 
say,  they  are  still  doing  business  on  the  prin- 
ciples which  exasperated  Cicero. 

Ask  an  architect  whether  the  cornice  on  the 
new  post  office  is  correct,  and  he  will  go  through 
the  cathedral  towers  of  Europe  as  swiftly  and  as 
surely  as  a  German  shell.  He  can  tell  you  about 
the  building  plan  of  the  first  Egyptian  temple 
more  easily  than  an  advertising  man  can  tell  you 
about  the  selling  plan  of  the  first  Egyptian  cig- 
arette. 

Look  at  the  precedents  a  doctor  has!  They 
talk  a  lot  about  modern  medicine,  but  some  prac- 
titioner in  the  day  of  Socrates  taught  him  how  to 
mix  a  very  efficacious  poison  by  the  simple  com- 

119 


I20  Making  Advertisements 

bination  of  a  few  scraps  of  hemlock  stirred  in  a 
cup  of  cold  water. 

Observe  their  clinics.  Consider  the  number 
of  cases  which  a  doctor  can  watch  in  a  week. 
And  then  think  of  an  advertising  man's  handicap 
in  being  obliged  to  wait  months  or  even  years  to 
see  whether  his  prescription  is  right  or  fatal. 
For  one  idea,  though,  advertising  is  indebted  to 
the  medical  profession.  That's  the  ^^  alibi "  about 
the  success  of  the  operation  in  spite  of  the  pa- 
tient's death.  How  true  it  is  that  an  advertising 
campaign  frequently  does  everything  expected 
of  it  except  sell  the  goods! 

There  will  be  some  who  will  point  to  bound 
volumes  of  our  very  excellent  trade  papers  and 
to  boundless  pages  of  hand-picked  investigations. 
But  compared  to  the  law,  medicine,  engineering, 
architecture,  acting,  plumbing,  cab-driving, 
teaching,  keeping  store,  banking,  contracting, 
farming,  publishing  or  any  other  of  our  sister 
professions,  advertising  has  no  more  guide  posts 
than  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  With  all  the  avail- 
able data  on  tap,  the  advertising  man  still  has 
to  answer  a  lot  of  questions  by  ear.  Putting  it 
another  way,  the  best  guide  he  has  is  his  common 
sense. 


Common  Sense  121 

The  most  successful  advertising  campaigns  al- 
ways seem  to  be  those  which  are  founded  on  a 
perfectly  simple  idea  —  just  the  application  of 
common  sense  to  selling. 

If  you  want  people  to  write  to  you  for  one  of 
your  booklets,  it's  been  proved  that  the  best  way 
is  to  display  a  picture  of  your  booklet  at  the  top 
of  your  advertisement  with  a  headline  not  about 
your  product  but  about  your  booklet.  That  is 
only  common  sense.  And  yet  many  advertisers 
who  put  their  booklet  offers  in  very  small  type 
at  the  bottom  of  advertisements  wonder  why 
they  don't  get  more  inquiries.  If  a  shop-keeper 
wants  inquiries  about  an  article,  he  displays  it  in 
his  window.  He  doesn't  hide  it  under  the  coun- 
ter at  the  back  of  his  store.  If  an  advertiser 
wants  inquiries,  and  still  more  inquiries,  he  can 
get  them  if  he  devotes  enough  of  his  space  to  his 
offer.  Whether  it  is  always  wise  to  go  out  after 
inquiries  is  another  story.  The  point  here  is  that 
if  a  man  wants  them,  all  he  needs  to  do  is  exer- 
cise as  much  common  sense  as  he  would  if  he 
were  dealing  with  people  face  to  face. 

Occasionally  some  one  looks  very  solemn  and 
announces  a  great  principle  of  advertising  — 
such  as  "  Show  your  product  in  action." 


122  Making  Advertisements 

Rightly  staged,  that  simple  idea  can  be  made 
to  sound  very  weighty  and  mysterious.  And  yet 
it  is  a  very  old  and  well-established  truth. 
When  the  New  York  Herald  building  was  still 
in  the  up-town  theater  district  crowds  used  to 
stand  fascinated  at  the  large  plate  glass  windows 
watching  the  presses  turning  out  tomorrow's  pa- 
per. The  white-clad  gentleman  who  flips  pan- 
cakes in  Childs'  windows  always  has  an  audi- 
ence. There's  no  question  about  it;  people  like 
to  see  a  product  in  action.  That's  the  principle 
behind  the  changing  electric  sign  —  the  kitten 
fighting  its  way  in  and  out  of  a  tangle  of  silk,  the 
fluttering  petticoat,  and  the  good  old  chariot 
race. 

Fortunately  the  excessive  use  of  the  word  psy- 
chology is  dying  out,  chiefly  because  most  people 
used  it  to  be  impressive  when  what  they  meant 
was  common  sense.  In  a  New  York  paper's 
business  page  this  item  was  headed  ''  Psychology 
in  Shoe  Selling  " : 

'^  A  certain  manufacturer  of  the  better  grade 
shoes  for  men,  who  recently  had  occasion  to  have 
new  showroom  fixtures  installed,  insisted  that 
the  wall  cases  containing  the  samples  should  be 
made  without  doors  on  them.    '  There  are  two 


Common  Sense  123 


reasons  for  this/  he  said  yesterday.  '  One  is  that 
I  have  yet  to  find  a  door  or  sliding  panel  that  will 
keep  dust  out  of  a  case,  which  means  that  it  is  not 
only  necessary  to  dust  the  samples  but  to  keep  the 
glass  clean  as  well.  The  main  reason,  however, 
is  that  my  experience  has  shown  me  that  a  buyer 
is  sometimes  kept  from  ordering  a  model  be- 
cause he  cannot  take  the  shoe  in  his  hand  with- 
out wrestling  with  a  glass  door  or  slide,  or  hav- 
ing it  done  for  him.  The  psychological  effect  of 
the  glass  between  him  and  the  sample  weakens 
his  buying  desire.  It  gives  him  the  same  feel- 
ing that  a  person  with  a  half  a  desire  to  buy 
chewing  gum  is  apt  to  have  when  confronted 
with  a  box  from  which  none  of  the  packages  has 
yet  been  removed.  He  looks  and  passes  by, 
while  a  ^  broken  '  box  would  have  made  him 
spend  his  money.'  " 

Another  person  might  argue  that  to  make  the 
merchandise  too  accessible  was  just  as  great  a 
mistake  because  the  surest  way  to  make  a  man 
desire  a  thing  is  to  make  him  think  he  cannot 
have  it.  Tell  an  advertiser  that  his  copy  is  not 
acceptable  to  a  certain  publisher  and  he  will 
want  nothing  in  the  world  so  much  as  to  get  into 
that  magazine.     A  certain  concern  turned  its 


124  Making  Advertisements 


whole  merchandising  plan  inside  out  a  few 
years  ago  to  conform  to  the  standards  of  a  news- 
paper which  had  refused  its  advertising. 

It's  pretty  dangerous  business  to  lay  down  a  set 
of  rules  and  say  they  are  based  on  psychology, 
because  too  often  the  theory  can  be  upset  by  the 
experience  of  some  one  else.  A  very  exclusive 
shop  on  Fifth  Avenue  finds  that  it  can  sell  more 
merchandise  by  keeping  all  its  stock  hidden  be- 
hind solid  oak  panels.  One  article  is  brought 
out  at  a  time. 

Some  jewelers  prefer  to  dazzle  their  custom- 
ers by  setting  before  them  all  at  once  a  whole 
constellation  of  precious  stones.  Others  insist 
that  the  most  effective  way  is  to  show  only  two 
pieces  —  the  one  that  they  want  the  customer 
to  buy  and  another  one  to  make  it  look  better  by 
contrast  than  it  would  alone. 

One  of  the  soundest  ideas  developed  by  the 
psychologists  of  business  is  concerned  with  this 
question : 

When  is  it  necessary  to  go  into  detailed  rea- 
sons and  when  can  advertising  simply  be  a  re- 
minder? Frank  Fehlman  tells  us  that  reasons 
must  be  given  if  you  arc  talking  about  something 
new  to  the  present  generation;  but  if  you  are  ad- 


Common  Sense  125 


vertising  a  product  which  our  fathers  and 
grandfathers  used  there  is  no  necessity  for  the 
reasons  why. 

Thus  you  must  go  into  details  if  you  are  sell- 
ing a  refrigerating  system  or  a  dictating  machine. 
But  if  you  are  selling  soap  or  tea  or  bread,  you 
needn't  stop  to  argue  —  just  remind. 

Certainly  no  one  will  quarrel  with  the  general 
principle  of  this  idea.  In  fact,  it  wasn't  neces- 
sary to  hold  laboratory  tests  to  establish  it. 

If  a  person  who  has  never  written  an  adver- 
tisement were  asked  to  prepare  two  pieces  of 
copy  —  one  about  a  cake  of  yeast  and  one  about  a 
typewriter  —  wouldn't  he  instinctively  go  into 
more  details  in  describing  the  typewriter  than 
the  yeast?  Wouldn't  his  intuition  tell  him 
that  more  people  knew  less  about  the  way 
typewriters  work  than  about  the  way  yeast 
works? 

And  yet  just  when  you  get  a  principle  safely 
nailed  down,  along  comes  something  to  tear  it  up 
again.  Just  the  other  day  an  advertising  man 
told  of  his  experience  with  a  group  of  type- 
writer salesmen.  He  had  been  addressing  them 
on  the  selling  points  of  their  typewriter  and  fi- 
nally he  turned  to  the  most  successful  one  of  the 


126  Making  Advertisements 

lot  and  said :  "  Won't  you  tell  us  what  arguments 
you  have  found  most  effective?  " 

''  Sure,''  replied  the  star  salesman.  "  I  carry 
one  of  our  typewriters  into  an  office  and  put  it 
down  on  a  desk  and  when  I  get  a  crowd  around 
me  I  jab  my  finger  down  on  some  letter  and  when 
the  key  snaps  back  I  lean  over  the  machine  and 
say,  ^  See?     The  blamed  thing  works! '  " 

Scientists  have  been  able  to  fertilize  eggs  by 
mechanical  processes  and  keep  them  alive,  but 
the  catch  in  the  secret  of  life  still  remains :  How 
do  you  make  the  egg? 

Psychology  might  teach  that  typewriter  sales- 
man how  to  stimulate  the  interest  of  his  pros- 
pects. But  he  knew  a  better  secret  than  that. 
He  knew  how  to  make  interest.  His  common 
sense  taught  him  how. 

While  the  war  was  going  on  a  great  many  con- 
cerns kept  up  their  advertising  even  though  they 
had  nothing  to  sell.  Many  of  them  were  con- 
sidered theorists  and  there  was  quite  a  lot  of  talk 
about  advertising  as  insurance.  Yet,  as  their 
competitors  discovered,  it  was  just  plain  com- 
mon sense. 

If  you  are  separated  from  a  person  for  several 
months  and  you  don't  write  to  him,  he  will  begin 


Common  Sense  127 


to  forget  you.  Advertisers  who  drop  out  of  the 
public's  sight  are  always  surprised  to  discover 
how  soon  they  are  forgotten.  Many  concerns 
are  now  trying  to  regain  the  places  which  they 
held  before  the  war  —  places  taken  by  competi- 
tors who  kept  their  names  before  the  public  even 
though,  or  perhaps  because,  they  used  all  of  their 
space  to  promote  war  measures. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  these  pages  to  belittle 
the  earnest  work  being  done  by  the  real  psycholo- 
gists of  business.  Perhaps  practical  men  be- 
lieve that  some  of  the  laboratory  tests  are  not  as 
valuable  as  they  might  be  if  the  subjects  were  a 
little  less  conscious  that  they  were  parts  of  a  test. 
But  it's  all  pointing  in  the  right  direction,  toward 
the  day  which  conscientious  advertising  men 
hope  to  live  to  see  —  when  advertising  will  be 
an  exact  science  with  a  full  set  of  dependable 
precedents. 

Our  quarrel  here,  if  we  have  a  quarrel,  is  with 
those  who  say  psychology  when  they  mean  com- 
mon sense  and  a  little  knowledge  of  human  na- 
ture. Like  so  many  other  superficialities  which 
are  fast  disappearing  from  advertising  as  the 
public  gets  better  acquainted  with  it  and  as 
earnest  effort  has  taken  the  place  of  bluff,  this 


128  Making  Advertisements 

habit  of  calling  simple  things  by  big  names  is 
bound  to  go. 

But  it  is  just  as  important  for  the  advertiser 
to  keep  his  feet  on  the  ground  as  for  the  adver- 
tising agent.  Occasionally  an  unreasoning  prej- 
udice is  encountered  —  a  blind  spot  in  common 
sense. 

An  advertiser  was  discussing  with  his  agents 
the  list  of  publications  for  his  coming  cam- 
paign. He  put  his  finger  on  one  magazine  and 
said: 

'^  I  can't  see  that  magazine.  We  never  get 
that  at  our  house.'' 

As  if  that  mattered!  Making  up  an  adver- 
tising list  from  one's  own  library  table  is  apt  to 
be  one  of  the  quickest,  as  well  as  the  surest,  ways 
to  seal  a  campaign's  doom. 

Another  advertiser  who  has  made  a  tremen- 
dous success  uses  publications  which  he  never 
sees  except  to  glance  over  a  copy  occasionally  to 
check  his  own  advertising.  He  is  a  very  fas- 
tidious, metropolitan  type  of  person  and  yet,  as 
an  advertiser,  he  knows  more  about  the  papers 
which  search  out  the  rustic  communities  where 
the  mail  order  crop  is  good  than  any  other  adver- 
tiser whom  his  agents  ever  meet. 


Common  Sense  129 


He  uses  his  head  instead  of  his  prejudices. 
He  lets  common  sense  make  up  his  schedules. 

Another  advertiser  retains  a  prejudice  against 
Sunday  newspapers.  It  is  futile  to  remind  him 
that  Sunday  papers  are  made  on  Saturday  nights 
and  that  if  his  conscience  really  works  it  will 
keep  him  out  of  Monday  morning's  papers 
which  are  made  on  Sunday.  He  doesn't  believe 
Sunday  papers  should  be  read  and  he  is  not  go- 
ing to  lend  them  the  weight  of  his  patronage. 
Unfortunately  others  do  —  among  them  his  com- 
petitors. 

If  an  advertising  man  were  to  lose  all  the  at- 
tributes of  success,  one  by  one,  the  last  one  to 
sacrifice  would  be  common  sense. 

It  tells  him  how  to  study  a  sales  chart  for  its 
weak  spots  and  shows  him  where  intensive  news- 
paper advertising  should  be  done  to  bolster  up 
a  poor  territory.  It  points  out  to  him  the  proper 
relation  between  sales  and  population  and  tells 
him  whether  low  figures  from  a  group  of  West- 
ern States  are  caused  by  poor  salesmen  or  just 
by  a  lack  of  people  who  can  buy. 

It  tells  him  when  a  manufacturer  has  a 
sufficiently  wide  distribution  of  his  product  to 
begin  national  advertising  and  helps  him  select 


130  Making  Advertisements 


a  list  of  magazines  whose  circulations  are  spread 
over  the  country  in  a  way  that  produces  the  right 
amount  of  pressure  everywhere. 

It  warns  him  when  to  go  slowly,  when  to  try 
out  every  piece  of  copy  cautiously  and  when  to 
throw  caution  to  the  winds.  It  dictates  the  size 
of  space,  the  kind  of  art  work,  the  choice  of  type. 
Call  it  what  you  will,  there  is  no  better  name  for 
it  than  common  sense. 


VII 

THE    GREAT   MYSTERY 
MERCHANDISING 


VII 

THE    GREAT    MYSTERY  — 
MERCHANDISING 

A  GREAT  many  people  in  and  out  of  the  adver- 
tising business  like  to  think  that  there  is  some- 
thing rakish  about  it.  They  speak  of  it  as  a 
game,  which  it  is  not,  of  an  advertising  agency 
as  a  shop,  which  it  is  not,  and  of  those  who  are 
engaged  in  it  as  clever,  which  is  not  at  all  the 
idea  or  the  ideal  of  most  advertising  men. 

They  speak  of  "  ad-writers  "  and  "  ad-men  " 
as  a  preceding  generation  spoke  of  lightning-rod 
salesmen ;  bright  young  men,  but  you  must  keep 
an  eye  on  them.  In  a  certain  good  agency  there 
is  a  standing  rule  that  no  one  shall  say  or  write 
the  abbreviation  ''  ad."  Advertisement  can  be 
called  adver/tj^ment  or  ad-y^rtisement,  since  Mr. 
Webster  countenances  both,  but  the  nickname 
''  ad  "  is  as  unwelcome  to  the  heads  of  this  agency 
as  the  word  "  con  "  would  be  to  a  lung-specialist. 

The  stage  is  beginning  to  produce  a  type  of 
advertising  man  built  with  the  same  depth  of 
character  study  as   the   stage   newspaper-man, 

133 


134  Making  Advertisements 


identified  by  his  note-book  and  pencil.  If  you 
have  ever  known  a  newspaper-man  you  know 
that  he  may  have  a  few  crumpled  sheets  of  copy 
paper  in  his  pocket,  but  he  almost  always  has  to 
borrow  a  pencil.  And  by  the  same  token  it  is 
not  always  possible  to  recognize  an  advertising 
man  by  his  plans  for  acquiring  great  wealth  un- 
der shady  circumstances.  Yet  glibness  with  get- 
rich-quick  ideas  is  the  characteristic  of  the  ad- 
vertising men  who  have  crept  into  the  drama. 
Some  day  some  one  will  write  a  real  play  about 
advertising. 

Meanwhile  this  superstition  of  shrewdness 
with  a  touch  of  mystery  persists.  And  because 
it  persists  inside  as  well  as  outside  of  the  adver- 
tising business,  people  have  a  great  fondness  for 
coining  phrases  about  it,  and  borrowing  the 
phrases  of  others. 

They  are  not  content  to  speak  of  a  publica- 
tion's circulation.  They  talk  of  "  consumer-ac- 
ceptance." They  are  not  satisfied  to  say  that  it 
goes  to  retail  merchants.  They  speak  of 
*^  dealer-influence."  They  do  not  stop  at  saying 
that  they  reach  about  all  the  possible  buyers  of 
your  product.  They  say  that  they  ''  saturate 
your  potential  market."     Or,  if  they  are  feeling 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     135 

even  more  exhaustive,  they  ^'  exhaust  all  your 
potential  possibilities." 

A  period  was  passed  in  w^hich  the  word  distri- 
bution was  as  great  a  fetish  in  advertising  as  ef- 
ficiency has  been  in  general  business  circles. 
But  perhaps  that  was  a  healthy  period,  after  all, 
for  it  came  at  a  time  when  advertisers  were  in- 
dulging themselves  in  throwing  handfuls  of 
money  at  full  pages  in  the  magazines  just  to  see 
it  splash.  After  a  few  prominent  advertisers 
had  wasted  considerable  sums  in  this  way  it  was 
pointed  out  to  them  that  there  was  no  use  adver- 
tising their  products  all  over  the  country  if  those 
products  were  on  sale  in  only  a  few  states  along 
the  Atlantic  seaboard. 

Apparently  that  was  a  new  idea  to  many  ad- 
vertisers. Without  reasoning  it  out  exactly,  they 
had  rather  expected  advertising  to  do  a  little 
magic  for  them,  so  that  when  Mrs.  Jim  Rogers 
of  Reno,  Nevada,  went  to  her  local  druggist  and 
asked  for  their  new  tooth-paste  she  would  find  it 
even  though  the  tooth-paste  had  never  been  sold 
to  the  trade  west  of  the  Mississippi. 

Publishers  of  nationally  circulated  magazines 
realized  that  if  national  advertising  was  to  pay 
it  would  have  to  be  supported  by  something  like 


136  Making  Advertisements 


national  representation  on  the  shelves  of  retail 
dealers.  So  the  shout  went  up,  "  Have  you 
got  distribution?  " 

And  that  started  the  word  going  the  rounds, 
until  no  magazine  representative  felt  that  he  was 
making  a  workmanlike  solicitation  unless  he 
tucked  in  at  least  five  "  distributions  "  to  each 
five  minutes.  And  no  agency  man  would  let  the 
conversation  drift  to  anything  so  commonplace 
as  copy  and  media  so  long  as  he  could  pierce  his 
customer  with  a  searching  eye  and  make  him 
confess  his  faults  of  distribution. 

Problem  was,  and  still  is,  another  word  ea- 
gerly taken  up.  In  a  burlesque  solicitation  pre- 
sented at  a  dinner  given  by  a  certain  publisher, 
the  Representative  began  his  talk  with  the  Ad- 
vertiser by  saying:  "  I  just  happened  to  be  in  the 
building  and  I  thought  Vd  drop  in  and  ask  you 
about  your  problems."  This  fondness  for  call- 
ing everything  a  problem  was  beautifully  satired 
in  a  circular  recently  issued  by  the  George  Bat- 
ten Company  from  which  these  paragraphs  are 
taken : 

If  you  glance  over  any  month's  advertising  — 
national,  newspaper,  or  direct  —  you  can  hardly 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  a  large  part  of  our  popula- 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     137 

tion  is  running  frantically  around  with  a  series  of 
problems  to  be  solved,  while  a  smaller  number,  like 
unselfish  schoolboys  with  "  ponies,"  are  standing  by 
with  the  solutions  of  these  problems  ready  to  hand. 
A  certain  firm's  ready-made  suits  will  solve  your 
clothing  problem. 

Another  man's  bean  has  solved  your  baked-bean 
problem. 

Somebody's  pressed  brick  can  solve  your  pressed- 
brlck  problem. 

There  are  any  number  of  things  that  will  solve 
the  housekeeping  problem. 

A  favorite  way  to  conclude  advertisements  Is, 
*'  What  Is  your  problem?  "  or,  ^'  Let  us  know  your 
problem." 

Now  It  Is  a  rather  obvious  fact  that  most  of  these 
alleged  problems  are  non-existent.  Few  smokers 
really  feel  that  they  have  a  smoke  problem.  Few 
motorists  are  conscious  of  a  pIston-rIng  problem. 
Not  many  of  the  just  realize  that  their  life  Is  be- 
clouded with  an  umbrella  problem. 

They  just  go  serenely  along,  wishing  they  had  a 
little  more  ready  money. 

Why,  then,  so  much  talk  about  this  problem  and 
that  problem? 

It  is  because  advertising  is  apt  to  make  the  adver- 
tiser vain  of  his  product.  He  needs  to  be  a  very 
well-balanced,  common-sense  sort  of  Individual,  else 
his  advertising  will  affect  him  so  much  more  than  It 
does  his  consuming  public  that  he  will  lose  his  entire 
perspective  of  the  public  consciousness. 


138  Making  Advertisements 

But  of  all  the  words  that  have  been  over- 
worked in  advertising,  the  greatest  of  these  is 
merchandising.  It  drifted  in  at  about  the  time 
of  distribution,  but  its  stay  promises  to  be  longer 
because  it  opens  up  vistas  of  infinitely  greater 
variety.  Its  charm  seems  to  be  that  it  possesses 
in  greatest  measure  the  characteristic  common 
to  distribution,  dealer  influence,  problem  and  all 
the  rest  of  these  trick  words  —  namely,  mystery. 

If  you  show  that  you  are  familiar  with  plain 
advertising,  if  you  think  that  writing  advertising 
sounds  easy,  if  you  know  a  man  whose  brother- 
in-law  is  an  artist  and  so  want  to  talk  art,  if  your 
wife's  cousin  used  to  be  a  printer  and  you  want  to 
discuss  printing  —  then  the  mystery  man  type  of 
advertising  man  will  tell  you  that  he  is  not  a  plain 
advertising  man;  he  is  a  merchandising  expert. 

And  there  he  has  you.  For  you  can't  antici- 
pate the  devious  paths  into  which  that  word  mer- 
chandising can  lead  the  conversation.  If  you 
think  that  merchandising  consists  of  intensive 
work  with  the  jobber  and  the  retailer,  he  will 
take  you  further  back  and  ask  you  how  you  hap- 
pened to  design  your  package  the  way  you  did. 
If  your  idea  of  merchandising  is  taking  tinted 
maps  of  the  United  States  and  sticking  them  full 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     139 

of  pins,  he  will  ask  you  what  cooperation  you  get 
from  newspapers  in  the  cities  where  you  adver- 
tise. If  you  start  telling  about  your  system  of 
discounts,  he  will  speak  darkly  of  an  investiga- 
tion to  discover  whether,  as  Wilbur  Corman 
once  said,  more  blondes  are  left-handed  in  Kan- 
sas than  brunettes  in  Connecticut. 

It  is  the  X  in  advertising,  is  the  word  merchan- 
dising. It  is  the  fountain  of  eternal  youth,  the 
pot  of  gold  at  the  end  of  the  rainbow,  the  hidden 
treasure  at  the  bottom  of  the  uncharted  lagoon. 
It  may  mean  anything  —  or  nothing. 

Now,  the  greatest  trouble  about  this  fondness 
for  the  pat  phrase  is  that  it  indicates  a  poverty 
of  vocabulary. 

"  Poverty  of  language,"  says  Adam  Sherman 
Hill,  "  is  the  source  of  much  slang,  a  favorite 
word  or  phrase  —  as  nice,  nasty,  beastly,  jolly, 
bully,  ghastly,  elegant,  exciting,  fascinating, 
gorgeous,  stunning,  splendid,  awfully,  utterly, 
vastly,  most  decidedly,  perfectly  lovely,  per- 
fectly maddening,  how  very  interesting!  —  be- 
ing employed  for  so  many  purposes  as  to  serve 
no  one  purpose  well." 

''  The  modern  use  of  slang  '  is  vulgar,'  "  writes 
T.  A.  Trollope,  ^'  because  it  arises  from  one  of 


140  Making  Advertisements 

the  most  intrinsically  vulgar  of  all  the  vulgar 
tendencies  of  a  vulgar  mind,  —  imitation. 
There  are  slang  phrases  which,  because  they  viv- 
idly or  graphically  express  a  conception,  or  clothe 
it  with  humor,  are  admirable.  But  they  are  ad- 
mirable only  in  the  mouths  of  their  inventors. 

*'  Of  course  it  is  an  abuse  of  language  to  say 
that  the  beauty  of  a  pretty  girl  strikes  you  with 
awe.  But  he  who  first  said  of  some  girl  that  she 
was  '  awfully  '  pretty,  was  abundantly  justified 
by  the  half  humorous,  half  serious  consideration 
of  all  the  effects  such  loveliness  may  produce." 

The  first  man  who  applied  the  word  mer- 
chandising to  his  work  had  a  vivid  picture  in 
his  mind.  No  doubt  he  knew  that  the  word,  ac- 
cording to  Webster,  means  simply  to  trade,  to 
buy  and  sell.  And  since  much  advertising  had 
failed  because  it  had  not  taken  into  account  the 
basic  principles  of  buying  and  selling,  he  felt 
that  if  he  could  add  merchandising  to  advertis- 
ing he  would  get  better  results.  So  his  use  of 
the  word  had  a  sound  principle  behind  it  —  the 
principle  of  making  advertising  pay  instead  of 
throwing  a  handful  of  money  at  a  printed  page. 
Nothing  could  be  sounder  than  that.  But  those 
who  came  after  him  have  added  a  meaning  here 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     141 

and  a  meaning  there  until  the  poor  old  word  has 
no  more  spark  in  it  than  a  war  quality  match. 

Some  one  once  compared  a  page  in  the  Satur- 
day Evening  Post  to  a  corner  lot.  They  cost 
about  the  same  —  $6,000.  Advertisers  some- 
times gasp  the  first  time  they  hear  that  figure. 
But  that's  not  the  fault  of  the  Post,  Respira- 
tion works  back  to  normal  when  it  is  pointed  out 
to  the  advertiser  that  he  would  have  to  pay 
$20,000  to  buy  enough  one-cent  stamps  to  ad- 
dress the  two  million  people  who  get  the  Post 
every  week.  And  certainly  it  would  cost  him 
another  cent  to  print  any  message  at  all.  So  you 
see  the  $6,000  charged  by  the  Post  is  a  pretty 
economical  way  of  saying  something  to  two  mil- 
lion Americans,  even  if  you  want  to  consider  the 
rate  of  this  advertising  on  its  most  superficial, 
and  least  sensible,  basis. 

Here,  then,  is  this  plot  of  white  paper  which 
you  can  rent  for  one  week  at  the  cost  of  a  corner 
lot  forever. 

If  you  bought  the  plot  of  real  estate  you  would 
consider  very  carefully  what  to  put  on  it.  You 
would  get  an  architect's  plans.  You  would 
think  for  a  long  time  just  where  to  place  your 
house  and  your  garage,  just  how  many  trees  and 


142  Making  Advertisements 

shrubs  and  hedges  and  flower  beds  to  plant. 
And,  if  you  are  like  most  home-owners,  you 
would  fuss  over  that  place  in  the  evenings  and 
early  mornings  and  on  Sundays  for  many  months 
until  you  made  it  exactly  the  way  you  wanted  it. 

Your  page  in  the  Post  is  as  much  of  an  invest- 
ment. It  deserves  just  as  thoughtful  considera- 
tion. There  is  as  much  inconsistency  in  put- 
ting twenty-five  dollars'  worth  of  art  work  and 
two  cents'  worth  of  copy  into  that  space  as  there 
would  be  in  putting  a  twenty-five  dollar  shanty 
and  two  cents'  worth  of  grass  on  your  $6,000  lot. 

Advertisers  have  come  to  realize  this  and,  en- 
couraged by  the  publishers,  they  are  getting  ex- 
perienced and  trained  assistance  in  preparing 
what  they  put  into  their  space. 

More  than  that,  they  are  laying  their  plans 
carefully  and  far  ahead,  just  as  you  would  lay 
your  plans  before  you  broke  ground  for  your 
house.  And  the  plans  which  come  before  the 
advertising  and  go  along  with  it  and  continue  be- 
tween insertions  and  after  them  —  these  plans 
are  built  on  the  principles  behind  this  tired  word 
—  merchandising. 

So  you  see  it  is  a  mighty  valuable  word,  after 
all;  or,  rather,  it  stands  for  a  mighty  valuable 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     143 

idea.  The  difficulty  lies  in  the  use  to  which  it  is 
put  when  a  few  perfectly  simple  ideas  are  placed 
between  limp  leather  covers,  tied  with  pink  rib- 
bons and  labeled  merchandising.  If  the  word 
means  simply  to  buy  and  to  sell,  as  Webster  says, 
then  in  the  name  of  all  that  is  rational  why  make 
it  mean  everything  from  crystal-gazing  to  the 
third  degree?  And  why  call  it  merchandising, 
merely  to  make  an  impression,  when  what  is 
meant  is  only  advertising  based  upon  carefully 
gathered  information  or  giving  advice  to  a  sales- 
manager  who  knows  more  about  selling  his  prod- 
uct than  any  outsider  can  ever  know? 

But  the  advertising  man  who  used  to  sell  neck- 
wear on  the  road  objects.  He  refuses  to  believe 
that  any  sales-manager  knows  more  than  he  does. 
When  he  uses  the  word  merchandising  he  means 
conducting  a  sales  investigation  and  formulat- 
ing a  sales  policy. 

A  man  who  is  the  active  head  of  one  of  the  larg- 
est and  most  successful  agencies  in  New  York, 
a  man  whose  opinions  are  respected  wherever  ad- 
vertising is  discussed,  was  talking  the  other  day 
about  investigations. 

*'  There  is  only  one  kind  of  investigation  worth 
a  whoop,"  he  said.     "  That  is  the  investigation 


144  Making  Advertisements 

in  which  the  investigators  do  not  know  what  they 
are  investigating!  " 

And  then  he  explained  more  fully.  He  said 
that  his  most  successful  investigations  were  con- 
ducted in  this  way: 

One  of  his  men  goes  to  the  city  which  is  to  be 
the  ^'  laboratory."  (That's  another  trick  word.) 
An  empty  room  in  an  office  building  is  engaged 
and  advertisements  are  inserted  in  the  want- 
columns  of  the  local  papers,  calling  for  intelli- 
gent men  with  good  character-references,  ca- 
pable of  asking  the  trade  of  a  certain  line  of  busi- 
ness a  few  simple  questions. 

The  applicants  find  a  bare  room  in  which  an 
energetic  young  man  sits  in  a  hired  chair  at  a 
hired  table.  More  hired  chairs  are  ranged  be- 
fore him. 

By  nine-thirty  the  investigators  are  assembled, 
questioned  and  twenty  successful  applicants  are 
waiting  for  instructions. 

^'  Now,  men,"  says  the  agency's  representative, 
"  we  want  you  to  call  on  the  haberdashers  of  this 
city.  Here  is  a  list  of  them  by  routes.  We  want 
you  to  have  a  conversation  with  each  one  of  the 
merchants  on  your  lists  —  a  conversation  about 
collars.     Base  your  conversations  on  this  list  of 


Data  Hounds 

The  data  hound  is  not  peculiar  to  the  advertising 
business  alone.  The  ancient  Greeks  spoke  of  the  man 
who  couldn't  see  the  forest  because  of  the  trees. 

But  in  the  advertising  business  there  are  many 
young  men — it  is  a  business  itself  not  yet  old. 

These  young  men  do  not  wish,  of  course,  to  accept 
even  the  obvious — unchallenged. 

And  so  with  the  aid  of  co-tangent  and  slide  rule,  a 
great  mass  of  data  is  compiled  to  the  confusion  of  the 
new  advertiser  and  the  amusement  of  the  old. 

For,  after  all,  the  elements  of  advertising  success  are 
very  simple  and  very  hard. 

Make  worthy  goods,  put  your  name  on  them  and 
tell  many  people  about  them  continually  for  many 
years.  For,  after  all,  "psychology"  means  human 
nature,  "potentiality"  means  human  wants,  and 
"cumulative  effect "  means  repetition. 

Advertisinz  space  in  the  Butterick  pub/icatims 
is  for  sale  by  accredited  advertisinz  agencies, 

Butterick — Publisher 

The  Delineator 
Everybody's  Magazine 

Two  dollars  the  year,  each 


One  of  the  most  valuable  phases  of  the  Butterick  advertising  is  that  it  has 
lampooned  the  foibles  of  the  business.  Advertising  is  just  old  enough  to 
have  its  wiseacres. 


146  Making  Advertisements 

questions,  but  don't  read  off  the  questions  or  let 
the  merchants  get  the  idea  that  they  are  being 
cross-examined.  Just  have  a  natural,  friendly 
talk  about  collars,  but  cover  the  ground  outlined 
by  those  questions." 

The  investigators  read  over  the  material  which 
he  hands  them.     He  assigns  the  routes. 

''  Now  is  there  anything  you  would  like  to  ask 
about?  "  he  inquires. 

"  In  these  questions  four  brands  of  collars  are 
mentioned,"  says  the  brightest  of  the  applicants. 
^'  Which  one  do  you  represent?  " 

"  I'll  tell  you  that  when  you  tell  me  the  an- 
swers to  those  questions,"  is  the  smiling  reply. 

The  agency  does  everything  possible  to  avoid 
the  dangers  of  most  investigations.  If  an  inves- 
tigator knows  what  brand  he  is  investigating,  too 
often  he  will  frame  his  questions  in  a  way  that 
will  force  the  answer  he  seeks,  just  as  a  magician 
forces  a  card  upon  a  person  in  the  audience. 

Or,  since  most  merchants  are  either  only  too 
eager  to  agree  or  too  set  upon  disagreeing,  he 
will  get  a  too  favorable  report  or  one  that  is  too 
unfavorable,  depending  upon  the  humor  of  the 
dealer  and  the  impression  he  has  been  able  to 
make. 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     147 


To  take  an  instance  of  the  yes-yes  type  of 
dealer,  the  investigator  drops  in  early  in  the 
morning.  The  store  is  practically  empty.  A 
clerk  is  wrapping  up  a  suit  of  underwear  for  the 
only  customer.  The  boss  is  looking  out  over  the 
partition  at  the  back  of  the  show-window,  whis- 
tling. The  investigator  noticed  that  as  he  studied 
the  window. 

"  Morning,  Mr.  Robinson,"  he  begins.  "  Nice 
display  of  F  &  X  Collars  you've  got  there.'' 

''  Yep.     Sell  a  lot  of  those  collars." 

"  Good  collars,  aren't  they?  " 

''My  trade  thinks  so.     Representing  them?  " 

"  In  a  way,  yes.  Not  out  for  orders,  though. 
Just  want  to  ask  you  a  few  questions." 

"  Fire  away." 

"  The  folks  who  make  those  collars  want  to 
advertise  them  more." 

"  Good  idea,"  agreed  Mr.  Robinson.  "  Ought 
to  be  pushed  harder.     Mighty  good  collar." 

"What  would  you  think  of  national  adver- 
tising in  the  big  magazines?" 

"Say,  that'd  be  immense!  Those  people 
never  did  half  enough  advertising  in  a  big  way. 
Mighty  good  collar  they've  got  there." 

"  And  don't  you  think  the  magazine  advertis- 


148  Making  Advertisements 

ing  ought  to  be  supported  by  some  local  adver- 
tising right  here  in  your  local  newspaper?  " 

"  Say!  Now  you're  talking!  Nothing  would 
do  me  as  much  good  as  that." 

"Which  paper?" 

''  Well,  they're  all  good." 

''  But  don't  you  think  morning  papers  would 
be  better  on  a  man's  proposition  like  this?  " 

"  Certainly  would.  That  would  help  me  a 
lot.     Mighty  good  collar  they've  got  there." 

"  And  how  about  some  hangers  for  your 
store?  " 

"Something  catchy?  Why,  I'd  like  nothing 
better  —  and  window  cards,  too,  if  they  were  the 
right  kind.  But  those  people  always  do  things 
right." 

"  You  wouldn't  advise  them  to  send  you  a  lot 
of  sales  letters  and  folders,  though,  would 
you?" 

"  I  should  say  not!  " 

"  Too  busy  to  read  them,  aren't  you?  " 

"  Why,  I  don't  get  a  minute  to  glance  at  any- 
thing like  that." 

The  investigator  remembers,  for  an  instant, 
the  picture  of  Mr.  Robinson  enjoying  his  leisure 
as  he  whistled  at  the  show-window,  but  he  also 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     149 


remembers  the  long  list  of  names  of  other  mer- 
chants on  his  route. 

''Well,  thanks,  Mr.  Robinson.  Fm  much 
obliged  for  all  the  time  you've  given  me.  I 
know  the  F  &  X  people  v^ill  be  delighted  to  get 
your  opinions." 

"  Alw^ays  glad  to  see  an  F  &  X  man  any  time. 
That's  a  mighty  good  collar  they've  got  there." 

The  net  of  that  interview^  w^ill  cause  the  F  &  X 
sales  manager  to  rub  his  hands  w^ith  delight, 
whereas  all  that  it  really  proved  was  that  a  man 
who  knew  how  to  ask  leading  questions  had  had 
a  talk  with  a  dealer  who  was  willing  to  be 
led. 

But  in  the  next  block  the  investigator  encoun- 
ters the  other  type.  He  is  encouraged  by  the  dis- 
play case  of  F  &  X  Collars,  but  his  cheery  greet- 
ing to  Mr.  Sanderson  does  not  get  a  very  hearty 
response. 

"  Fine  lot  of  our  collars  you  are  showing  there, 
Mr.  Sanderson,"  he  begins. 

'^  Just  a  minute,"  answers  that  merchant.  Al- 
though there  is  no  one  else  in  the  store  he  crosses 
to  the  opposite  counter  and  starts  examining  his 
line  of  underwear  and  pajamas.  The  investiga- 
tor follows. 


150  Making  Advertisements 

"  Got  some  good  news  for  you,  Mr.  Sander- 
son, about  F  &  X  Collars,"  he  persists. 

*'  Yeh?  "  This  from  below  the  counter  level 
where  a  search  for  more  boxes  of  pajamas  is  in 
progress. 

^'  Going  into  a  real  advertising  campaign,  they 
are." 

"  Heard  that  before." 

"  H-m-m.     Before,  you  say?  " 

"  Sure.  Almost  every  year  those  rumors  of  a 
real  campaign  get  started." 

"  But  this  is  no  rumor." 

"  That's  what  they  all  say." 

"  Going  to  begin  in  a  big  way." 

*'  Lots  of  'em  begin  big." 

*^  In  a  big  way  in  the  big  magazines." 

"Whatgood'll  that  do  me?" 

"  Why,  think  of  the  subscribers  to  those  maga- 
zines who  live  right  here  in  your  town!  Look 
at  this  list." 

Mr.  Sanderson  glances  at  the  elaborate  port- 
folio in  which  the  covers  of  the  magazines  are 
reproduced. 

"  I  never  read  any  of  those  magazines." 

"  But  your  fellow-townsmen  do." 

"  Nope.     Ain't  a  magazine  town." 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     151 

"  Well,  what  would  you  think  of  newspaper 
advertising?  '' 

"  None  of  the  papers  here  are  any  good." 

^^  But  they're  read,  aren't  they?  " 

^^  Not  the  ads." 

"  How  do  you  know?  " 

"  Oh,  well,  I  know." 

"  And  the  newspaper  advertising  will  be 
backed  up  by  a  fine  lot  of  dealer-helps." 

No  answer. 

"  There'll  be  window-cards,  hangers,  leaflets 
to  wrap  up  with  your  pack  —  " 

"  Say!  What  do  these  F  &  X  people  think  I 
am?  Think  I'm  working  in  their  shipping  de- 
partment? " 

^^  Certainly  not.  But  you  will  make  use  of 
good  dealer-helps,  won't  you?  " 

"  Sure!     I  sell  all  that  stuff  for  old  paper!  " 

Mr.  Sanderson's  face,  for  the  first  time,  breaks 
into  a  smile.     The  investigator  pauses. 

''  Say,  you  tell  those  people  of  yours,"  Mr. 
Sanderson  goes  on,  "  to  put  some  of  their  bright 
ideas  into  their  styles.  They  haven't  had  a  new 
idea  since  they  invented  button-holes.  Now, 
I'm  busy!" 

And  when  the  F  &  X  sales-manager  got  his 


152  Making  Advertisements 


report  on  that  interview  he  sent  a  tart  memoran- 
dum to  the  designing  department.  But  did  the 
interview  prove  anything?  Only  that  an  ill-in- 
formed investigator  had  had  a  talk  with  a  mer- 
chant who  never  felt  well  early  in  the  morning. 

Then  aren't  there  any  instances  in  which  in- 
vestigations can  be  valuable?  To  be  sure  there 
are. 

A  certain  manufacturer  knew  that  his  com- 
pany was  very  unpopular  with  the  trade.  His 
salesmen  told  him  so,  but  their  report  failed  to 
agree  on  the  causes.  A  member  of  the  trade-aid 
department  of  a  certain  advertising  medium 
called  on  the  merchants  of  his  city  independ- 
ently. He  got  their  confidence.  He  was  not 
in  the  employ  of  the  manufacturer  and  the  deal- 
ers knew  it.  They  talked  more  frankly  to  him 
than  they  ever  had  been  willing  to  talk  to  the 
manufacturer's  own  men.  He  pinned  them 
down  to  specific  complaints.  His  subsequent 
recommendations  led  to  some  changes  in  the 
local  branch  office  force  and  to  a  radical  change 
of  policy  tending  toward  more  generous  han- 
dling of  returned  old  merchandise.  Today  the 
trade's  attitude  is  wholly  changed.  That  manu- 
facturer's goods  are  sold  willingly. 


The  Great  Mystery  —  Merchandising     153 


Another  manufacturer  felt,  quite  rightly,  that 
his  own  sales  organization  knew  the  trade's 
opinions  very  well  indeed.  A  careful  system  of 
reports  was  very  conscientiously  kept  by  sales- 
men and  "  missionaries"  and  tabulated  regularly. 
But  this  manufacturer  wanted  to  know  more 
about  the  consumer's  idea  of  his  product.  He 
wanted  to  know  why  people  bought  his  product 
and  the  products  of  his  competitors. 

So  his  agency's  investigators  collected  the 
opinions  of  a  thousand  consumers.  They  struck 
up  conversations  in  barber-shops,  in  smoking 
compartments,  on  street  cars.  They  tabulated 
their  results  and  then  went  after  a  second  thou- 
sand. It  was  surprising  to  see  how  closely  the 
results  of  the  second  thousand  men  coincided 
with  the  first  thousand.  And  when  you  get  into 
numbers  as  great  as  thousands,  the  law  of  aver- 
ages begins  to  take  pretty  good  care  of  the  yes- 
yes  boys  and  the  human  crabs. 

When  a  sales  organization  is  weak,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  an  advertising  man  who  has  dealt 
with  many  strong  sales  organizations  can  offer 
useful  ideas.  But  his  most  useful  idea  would  be 
to  help  strengthen  the  sales  organization. 

The  point  is  that  in  its  eagerness  to  create  a 


154  Making  Advertisements 


selling  point  for  itself  or  to  minimize  a  weak- 
ness in  actual  advertising  ideas  of  copy  and  pres- 
entation, an  agency  is  often  apt  to  leap  lightly 
over  the  function  for  which  it  primarily  exists 
and  land  on  ground  rightfully  belonging  to  the 
marketing  heads  of  the  manufacturer's  business. 
Somewhere  in  the  business  itself  is  an  idea  so 
simple  and  tangible  that  the  public  will  respond 
to  it.  The  advertising  man's  job  is  to  find  that 
idea  and  then  to  use  all  the  skill  and  technique 
and  ability  at  his  command  to  translate  that  idea 
into  terms  which  the  public  will  understand  and 
like  and  want.  He  will  be  reasonably  busy  if  he 
does  just  that. 


VIII 
LIFTING   DEAD   WEIGHT 


VIII 
LIFTING    DEAD    WEIGHT 

In  a  certain  intensive  advertising  campaign  it 
was  decided  to  use  every  newspaper  in  a  certain 
state.  That  meant  about  two  hundred  dailies 
and  five  hundred  weeklies,  taking  in  most  of  the 
foreign  language  papers,  including  the  Scandi- 
navian. 

It  was  a  campaign  of  propaganda  —  one  of 
the  first  instances  of  selling,  on  a  broad  scale,  an 
idea  rather  than  a  manufactured  product.  There 
were  to  be  three  full  pages  and  three  half  pages 
in  the  dailies  and  two  pages  in  the  weeklies,  all 
appearing  within  a  period  of  eight  days. 

For  many  reasons  the  decision  to  run  this  cam- 
paign was  delayed  until  the  last  moment.  The 
agency  executive  entrusted  with  its  preparation 
faced  the  sobering  thought,  therefore,  that  he 
must  complete  the  copy,  art  work,  type-setting, 
electrotyping  and  shipping  of  this  entire  cam- 
paign within  eight  or  ten  days  from  the  time  that 
he  was  told  to  go  ahead. 

It  happened  that  although  no  finished  copy 

157 


158  Making  Advertisements 

had  been  written,  the  subject  was  engaging  the 
public's  discussion  at  that  time  and  the  agency 
man  had  been  saturating  himself  with  the  argu- 
ments on  both  sides  of  the  question  for  many 
months.  So  it  wasn't  a  matter  of  digging  for 
copy  ideas;  rather  was  it  a  matter  of  finding  out 
what  to  throw  away. 

So  within  a  day  or  two  the  copy  had  been 
written  for  ten  or  twelve  possible  advertisements 
and  the  ideas  of  the  illustrations  and  layout  were 
originated  at  the  same  time.  Out  of  the  lot, 
eight  pieces  were  selected  and  then  the  telephone 
wires  began  to  buzz,  summoning  the  artists  whose 
work  was  wanted. 

It  was  decided  not  to  use  the  work  of  any  one 
artist,  but  rather  to  pick  the  man  or  woman  whose 
technique  was  most  appropriate  to  each  subject. 
And  it  was  also  decided  to  use  real  artists  — 
every  one  a  high-priced  star. 

Some  of  them  had  never  worked  ''  commer- 
cially "  before,  and  they  approached  the  agency 
with  that  odd  mixture  of  diffidence  and  eager- 
ness with  a  thin  veneer  of  haughtiness  which 
artists  have  adopted  in  self-defense  in  the  past 
few  years  when  they  have  been  the  class  of  work- 
men upon  whose  services  every  propagandist  has 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  159 

cheerfully  called  without  a  thought  of  payment. 
The  engraver  or  printer  or  lithographer  repro- 
ducing the  work  of  the  artist  has  sold  his  mer- 
chandise like  any  maker  of  shoes  or  underwear. 
But  the  people  creating  what  he  reproduced, 
dealing  in  those  imponderables  called  ideas  and 
technique,  have  been  expected  to  labor  for  love. 
And  labor  they  have  —  with  as  much  love  as 
they  could  muster. 

But  when  the  artists  in  this  instance  were  told 
that  this  campaign  was  on  a  business  basis,  and 
when  it  developed  that  all  of  them  were  thor- 
oughly in  sympathy  with  the  ideas  to  be  adver- 
tised, the  haughtiness  and  diffidence  died  away 
and  only  eagerness  was  left.  Everything  was 
serene  until  the  agency  man  asked : 

"  And  now  how  are  you  fixed  for  time?  " 

^'  Pretty  well,"  replied  one  whose  answer  was 
typical,  "  I'm  illustrating  two  stories  for  one 
magazine  and  I'm  making  a  cover  for  another, 
but  I  should  think  that  in  about  four  weeks  —  " 

''  In  four  weeks,"  the  agency  man  broke  in, 
'^  this  campaign  will  be  over." 

There  was  a  moment  of  amazement.  The  ar- 
tist cleared  his  throat,  accepted  a  cigarette  and 
asked  in  a  puzzled  way: 


i6o  Making  Advertisements 

"  Just  when  did  you  want  my  drawing,  then?  " 

"  Next  Friday/' 

"  And  this  is  Tuesday?     Whew!  " 

"Whew  is  right!'' 

But  in  the  end  all  of  them  readjusted  their 
schedules  in  some  way,  like  the  good  souls  that 
they  are,  and  by  the  next  Friday  the  whole  col- 
lection was  in. 

Meanwhile  the  copy  had  been  approved  with 
its  rough  layouts. 

From  that  point  there  were  three  ways  to  pro- 
ceed. A  separate  piece  of  typewritten  copy 
could  have  been  sent  to  each  newspaper  with 
marginal  notations  specifying  sizes  and  kinds  of 
type  to  be  used  in  setting,  the  notations  corre- 
sponding to  others  marked  upon  an  accompany- 
ing layout.  With  these  instructions  would  have 
to  be  sent  an  electrotype  of  the  illustration. 

This  method  was  rejected  for  three  reasons: 
Many  of  the  papers  had  no  equipment  to  set  so 
much  type.  Even  if  they  had,  they  probably 
wouldn't  have  the  right  kind  of  type  and  the  set- 
ting would  be  awkward,  slip-shod  and  ineffec- 
tive, and  —  finally — it  would  have  been  neces- 
sary to  see  proofs  for  correction  and  there  was 
no  time  for  this.     So,  as  in  the  case  of  the  man 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  i6i 

who  told  the  girl  that  there  were  eight  reasons 
why  he  could  not  marry  her  and  the  first  one  was 
his  wife,  one  reason  was  enough. 

A  second  way  would  have  been  to  have  each 
advertisement  set  by  a  metropolitan  daily  and 
then  to  have  matrices  made  by  this  paper  in  suf- 
ficient quantity  to  supply  all  the  rest.  But  there 
is  only  one  New  York  paper  with  a  composing 
room  which  sets  type  with  enough  care  and  skill 
to  satisfy  an  exacting  advertiser.  And  to  put  the 
whole  mechanical  burden  upon  that  one  paper 
would  have  been  unfair.  And  besides,  even  that 
paper's  composing  room  does  not  quite  measure 
up  to  the  standards  of  the  best  job  printers  who 
have  specialized  in  advertising  composition. 

There  was  one  more  reason  for  rejecting  this 
second  way.  Some  of  the  illustrations  contained 
delicate  lines  which  would  be  blurred  by  some  of 
the  papers  if  they  printed  from  plates  cast  from 
matrices. 

So  although  the  third  way  involved  a  great 
deal  more  expense,  it  was  chosen.  Three  job 
printers  devoting  all  the  time  of  their  establish- 
ments to  advertising  composition  were  picked. 
Each  one  received  copy  and  layouts  for  three  or 
four  advertisements. 


1 62  Making  Advertisements 

Meanwhile  the  artists'  original  drawings  had 
been  sent  to  the  engravers  —  those  containing 
only  pen  and  ink  work  to  one  firm  making  good 
zinc  line  cuts  and  those  in  which  charcoal  or 
''  wash  "  were  used  to  another  house  where  spe- 
cially careful  halftones  could  be  expected. 

Because  the  layouts  were  made  accurately  it 
was  possible  for  the  compositors  to  set  their  type 
without  waiting  for  the  engravers'  plates  of  the 
illustrations.  Space  for  the  picture  was  left  in 
each  advertisement  and  as  soon  as  the  plates  ar- 
rived from  the  engravers  they  were  dropped  into 
place. 

These  days  very  few  intelligent  advertisers 
need  to  be  sold  on  the  idea  of  hand-composition 
by  an  outside  job  printer.  But  occasionally  one 
encounters  a  man  who  demurs  at  paying  the 
price  of  having  his  advertisements  properly  set. 

Such  men  as  Will  Bradley,  Benjamin  Sher- 
bow,  Everett  R.  Currier  and  one  or  two  other 
specialists  in  typography  have  done  an  incalcu- 
lable service  to  advertising  in  educating  advertis- 
ers to  want  and  expect  and  be  willing  to  pay  for 
type-setting  that  is  pleasing  to  look  at  and  easy 
to  read.  They  have  been  the  landscape  archi- 
tects of  the  printed   advertising  page.     Fortu- 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  163 


nately  their  example  has  been  an  inspiration  to 
many  other  men  who  have  the  sense  and  taste  to 
give  typography  the  serious,  conscientious  at- 
tention that  it  deserves.  And,  unfortunately, 
their  example  has  also  attracted  a  lesser  group 
of  those  who  in  another  profession  would  be 
called  quacks.  Apparently  it  seems  very  easy 
to  sit  in  a  large  airy  office  and  charge  fees  for 
doing  nothing  but  arranging  type  without  even 
touching  it.  But  the  results  of  the  work  of  the 
real  ones  are  the  surest  indication  of  the  tremen- 
dous amount  of  technical  training  and  natural 
taste  that  this  new  and  undercrowded  profes- 
sion requires.  Typography  is  especially  com- 
mended to  the  attention  of  the  man  with  an  am- 
bition to  enter  the  advertising  business  by  a  door 
that  still  stands  wide  open. 

The  most  successful  typographers  have  small 
patience  with  beauty  for  beauty's  own  sake.  A 
long  paragraph  entirely  set  in  capital  letters  and 
properly  placed  upon  a  page  with  wide  margins 
of  white  space  may  be  a  delight  to  the  eye,  but 
it  is  infernally  hard  to  read.  And  since  the  first 
requirement  of  an  advertisement  is  to  get  itself 
read,  an  advertisement  which  is  simply  a  beauti- 
ful design  is  not  a  good  advertisement. 


164  Making  Advertisements 

Typography's  big  service  to  advertising  is  in 
making  advertisements  easy  to  read  —  by  the 
choice  of  type,  by  proper  spacing  between  words 
and  lines,  and  by  using  the  right  size  of  type  for 
the  eye  to  follow  with  comfort  and  pleasure 
along  a  line  of  any  given  length. 

In  the  offices  of  most  newspapers  and  many 
magazines  there  simply  isn't  time  to  fuss  over 
the  little  things  that  make  such  a  big  difference 
in  the  appearance  of  advertisements.  A  great 
deal  of  setting  must  be  done  by  machine  and, 
marvelous  as  they  are,  the  machines  lack  the 
niceties  and  finish  of  hand  work.  Also,  most 
publishers'  composing  rooms  are  woefully  lack- 
ing in  the  few,  simple,  modern  type  faces  which 
the  discerning  advertiser  has  learned  to  prefer. 
Any  number  of  fancy  and  unreadable  faces  are 
usually  available,  faces  that  seem  to  have  been 
designed  by  the  same  mid-Victorian  who 
thought  of  colored  squares  of  glass  for  the 
window  on  the  stair-landing  in  houses  with  cu- 
polas and  tin  bath  tubs.  These  scroll-saw  types 
are  often  produced  when  an  interest  in  typog- 
raphy is  evidenced;  usually  produced  with  an 
air  of  '*Now  I'll  give  you  something  nifty." 
And  that's  what  they  are. 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  165 


Meanwhile,  that  idea-campaign  has  been  left 
suspended  in  mid-air.  It  had  just  been  sent  in 
sections  to  three  printing  offices  to  be  put  into 
type. 

When  the  first  proofs  were  received  they  were 
corrected  and  sent  back  for  revision  without  be- 
ing shown  to  the  advertiser.  Corrections  of  this 
sort  are  unavoidable  even  when  the  most  care- 
ful layout  has  been  made.  Copy  takes  on  a  new 
look  when  it  gets  into  type.  The  sense  is  often 
broken  badly  by  the  end  of  a  line.  A  short  line 
at  the  end  of  a  paragraph  sometimes  calls  undue 
attention  to  itself.  A  new  and  better  headline 
often  suggests  itself  when  the  old  one  stares  out 
at  you  from  a  printer's  proof.  It  is  frequently 
apparent  that  a  few  minor  changes  in  spacing 
will  vastly  improve  the  appearance  of  the  ad- 
vertisement. Mechanical  changes  like  these 
are  best  made  before  the  proof  is  shown  to  the 
advertiser  so  that  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  lay 
the  proof  before  him  with  an  outburst  of  apolo- 
gies. 

With  the  revisions  made  the  proofs  were  sub- 
mitted. Because  this  advertiser  was  a  good  ad- 
vertiser he  looked  them  over  very  carefully, 
offering  no  snap  judgments  and  evidently  reject- 


i66  Making  Advertisements 

ing  a  number  of  miscellaneous  suggestions  as 
they  popped  into  his  head.  Finally  he  asked 
why  certain  things  had  been  done  this  way  or 
that  way.  In  the  end  his  criticisms  were  nar- 
rowed down  to  a  very  few  constructive  changes 
—  changes  which  obviously  strengthened  and 
clarified  the  advertisements. 

Later  the  same  day  revised  proofs  were  shown 
to  him.  This  time  there  were  practically  no 
more  alterations. 

"  All  right,"  he  said  at  the  end  of  this  meet- 
ing, ^'  go  ahead  and  shoot!  " 

This  was  late  in  the  afternoon.  Ten  or  twelve 
men  were  waiting  for  that  word  in  each  of  the 
three  printing  offices.  Thirty-five  more  were 
waiting  for  it  at  the  electrotyping  plant. 

The  agency  man  went  from  one  printing 
office  to  another  in  a  taxi,  personally  seeing  a 
finally  revised  proof  of  each  advertisement  and 
giving  it  his  O.  K.  As  fast  as  an  advertisement 
was  approved  the  form  containing  it  was  locked 
up  and  carried,  in  the  printer's  truck,  to  the  elec- 
trotypers. 

And  then  in  a  few  hours,  through  the  magic 
of  hot  copper  and  lead  and  felt,  the  metal  of  that 
campaign  was  moulded.     The  link  was  cast  be- 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  167 

tween  one  man's  pencil  and  the  presses  of  hun- 
dreds of  newspapers  with  their  millions  of 
readers. 

Wagons  and  trucks  began  arriving  at  the 
agency  man's  office  —  each  loaded  with  its  slabs 
of  copper  or  lead.  Messengers  staggered  back 
and  forth  from  truck  to  shipping  room,  where 
hammers  were  pounding  as  electrotypes  and 
stereotypes  were  nailed  into  their  wooden  boxes. 

Clerks  went  from  table  to  table,  issuing  labels 
for  the  packages  and  boxes  and  checking  off  the 
shipments  on  their  lists  of  newspapers. 

Other  clerks  filled  out  their  order  blanks, 
giving  the  publishers  instructions  about  the  dates 
of  insertion  and  telling  which  piece  of  copy  was 
to  run  on  each  day. 

That  shipping  room  could  have  become  bed- 
lam Itself  without  the  slightest  effort.  It  was 
noisy  enough  of  necessity,  but  because  plans  had 
been  laid  in  advance,  because  every  step  had  been 
anticipated,  a  system  was  working  perfectly 
under  the  apparent  confusion.  If  there  was 
noise  it  was  because  metal  refuses  to  move  itself 
from  place  to  place  without  noise. 

But  by  the  next  evening  the  weight  of  that 
campaign's  metal  was  evenly  distributed  over 


i68  Making  Advertisements 


the  press-rooms  of  hundreds  of  newspapers. 
And  the  agency  man  was  as  much  relieved  as  if 
he  had  actually  freed  his  shoulders  from  those 
tons  of  copper  and  lead. 

Compared  to  most  campaigns,  this  one  was 
handled  very  quickly.  And  yet  it  passed 
through  all  the  mechanical  stages  of  a  campaign 
prepared  at  a  more  normal  and  leisurely  pace. 
Its  passage  was  simply  compressed  into  a  shorter 
period. 

But  occasionally  even  greater  speed  is  re- 
quired. A  certain  series  of  advertisements  was 
once  decided  upon  late  in  the  afternoon  of  a 
November  day.  On  the  following  morning  the 
first  piece  of  copy  appeared  in  a  dozen  cities  in- 
cluding San  Francisco  and  Seattle. 

Everything  was  sent  by  telegraph.  A  long 
telegram  was  drafted  starting  with  insertion  or- 
ders. Then  came  type  specifications,  including 
borders,  margins,  type  sizes,  spacing  and  even 
the  location  of  a  box  of  italics.  The  text  itself 
was  preceded  and  followed  by  the  word 
"  quote.'' 

The  astonishing  part  of  it  was  that  a  week 
later,  when  all  the  checking  copies  of  the  papers 
were  assembled  in  New  York,   the  variations 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  169 

among  them  were  so  slight  as  to  be  negligible. 
They  were  scarcely  greater  than  they  would 
have  been  if  each  of  the  papers  had  been  given 
plenty  of  time  to  set  and  submit  proofs.  News- 
paper composition  may  not  be  as  exact  as  it 
should  be,  but  there  are  times  when  speed  is  the 
first  requirement  and  at  those  times  the  newspa- 
per's composing  room  comes  up  to  scratch  like  a 
shot. 

An  experience  with  a  campaign  of  large  me- 
tallic bulk  is  very  wholesome  for  any  one  en- 
gaged in  the  practice  of  advertising.  It  instills 
a  new  and  enhanced  respect  for  the  dead  weight 
of  sheer  metal  underlying  the  business.  A  man 
who  has  passed  through  it  can  never  correct  a 
proof  so  thoughtlessly  as  he  did  before;  he  re- 
members that  if  he  tells  the  printer  to  take  a 
word  out  of  the  middle  of  a  paragraph,  he  may 
be  necessitating  the  resetting  of  everything  in 
that  paragraph  from  that  word  down  to  the  end. 
Of  course  if  a  change  should  be  made,  it  must  be 
made  even  if  it  means  resetting  the  whole  adver- 
tisement. But  printers  are  paid  by  the  hour 
and  they  are  trained  to  be  very  philosophical 
about  what  they  do  with  their  time.  If  a  change 
is  marked,  it  will  be  made. 


lyo  Making  Advertisements 

Many  an  advertiser  has  been  astonished  to  get 
a  bill  for  three  or  four  hours  of  composition  for 
revision  when  he  distinctly  remembers  having 
changed  only  two  or  three  words.  He  forgets 
that  the  new  words  were  not  the  same  length  as 
the  old  ones.  And,  as  has  been  said,  type  is  not 
made  of  rubber  and  if  a  word  is  too  long  to  go 
into  a  given  space,  it  can't  be  squeezed  in. 

The  night  city  editor  in  a  New  York  news- 
paper office  once  handed  to  a  new  copy  reader 
a  proof  of  a  column-long  speech. 

"  Cut  this  to  three  sticks,"  he  said.  That 
meant  three-eighths  of  a  column.  And  it  was 
within  ten  minutes  of  edition  time. 

The  copy  reader  went  through  that  speech  as 
if  he  were  editing  type-written  copy.  If  he  saw 
a  sentence  that  could  be  spared  from  the  middle 
of  a  paragraph,  he  marked  it  out.  That  proof 
looked  like  a  letter  that  had  passed  the  censor 
with  heavy  casualties.  The  night  city  editor 
looked  over  his  shoulder. 

"  That's  type,  man,"  he  exclaimed,  "  You 
aren't  editing  a  manuscript!"  And  then  he 
took  a  clean  proof  and  cut  it  down  by  marking 
out  whole  paragraphs  or  the  last  few  lines  of 
paragraphs.     In   the  press-room  a  compositor 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  171 

made  his  indicated  changes  swiftly  and  surely  — 
merely  by  lifting  out  whole  paragraphs  of  type 
or  the  lines  at  the  ends  of  paragraphs.  To  make 
the  changes  marked  by  the  new  copy  reader 
would  have  meant  entirely  resetting. 

The  advertiser  who  wants  to  change  a  type 
proof  for  good  reason  is  certainly  entitled  to 
have  it  reset  as  often  as  he  likes.  But  if  he 
doesn't  want  to  throw  his  money  away  and  waste 
the  productivity  of  a  printing  office,  he  will 
make  no  changes  on  whim  and  he  will  remember 
that  the  flirt  of  his  pencil  may  mean  hours  of 
lifting  and  carrying  and  re-arranging  of  pieces 
of  metal  by  somebody  —  and  somebody  who  is 
uncommonly  well  paid  for  the  efifort  these  days. 

The  importance  of  one  of  these  pieces  of 
metal  —  a  very  small  one  —  was  admirably  illus- 
trated recently  in  the  publication  of  a  certain 
advertiser's  catalogue. 

The  pages  containing  his  price  list  had  been 
checked  and  re-checked  with  special  care  by 
himself,  by  his  advertising  manager  and  by  his 
agency's  representative.  And  yet  when  the  first 
copies  of  his  catalogue  were  delivered  to  him  he 
saw  at  a  glance  that  a  leading  article  was  listed 
at  $1.00  instead  of  $1.50. 


172  Making  Advertisements 

His  voice  fairly  crackled  as  he  phoned  his 
agency  about  the  mistake.  His  agency's  execu- 
tive reached  for  the  final  proofs.  There  it  was 
in  the  proofs  —  correct  at  $1.50.  And  there  it 
was  in  the  finished  catalogue  —  incorrect  at 
$1.00. 

The  presses  were  running,  the  printer  re- 
ported, duplicating  that  mistake  as  fast  as  ink 
could  touch  paper. 

''Stop  'em!"  yelled  the  agency  man.  And 
after  the  mistake  was  corrected  and  the  world 
was  being  told  that  it  would  have  to  pay  $1.50, 
an  inquiry  was  started. 

It  was  a  mystery  for  several  days.  Every  copy 
of  the  final  proof  was  right  and  yet  the  very 
first  finished  catalogue  was  wrong.  The  printer 
was  known  to  be  reliable.  When  he  said 
that  he  didn't  see  how  it  could  have  happened, 
his  word  was  enough. 

Finally,  he  called  up  the  agency  one  day  with 
the  solution.  A  little  red-headed  devil  had  con- 
fessed—  devil  being  used  in  its  professional  and 
not  personal  sense.  Trundling  one  of  the  forms 
from  composing-room  to  press-room,  this  young- 
ster had  bumped  into  a  door-jamb.  The  form 
slid  to  the  floor.     A  little  of  the  type  fell  out. 


Lifting  Dead  Weight  I73 


Just  then  the  whistle  blew  for  lunch.  The  kid 
was  afraid  of  losing  his  job  and  prevailed  upon  a 
good-natured  compositor  to  replace  the  missing 
type.  All  of  it  couldn't  be  found  on  the  floor, 
so  from  a  set  of  final  proofs  the  missing  lines 
were  taken,  correctly  as  they  thought.  They  did 
a  good  job  of  it,  in  everything  but  that  one  wrong 
price. 

The  agency  man  trusted  the  printer  and  be- 
lieved this  explanation.  It  could  have  hap- 
pened—  just  barely.  But  he  couldn't  ask  his 
customer  to  take  his  word  for  another  man's 
word  about  an  incident  like  that.  So  all  the  ad- 
vertiser ever  knew  was  that  he  finally  received 
correct  copies  of  his  catalogue  to  the  full  num- 
ber of  his  order. 

That  was  all  that  interested  him.  The  agency 
is  the  connecting  link  between  its  advertisers  and 
an  army  of  mechanical  workers  and  many  tons 
of  metal.  When  an  advertiser  sees  an  advertise- 
ment produced  by  his  agency,  he  considers  it  as 
the  product  of  the  agency. 

And  this  is  as  it  should  be.  He  doesn't  care 
how  many  processes  are  involved  any  more  than 
he  cares  how  many  sources  his  lawyer  consults 
in  the  preparation  of  a  brief.     It  is  like  holding 


174  Making  Advertisements 

an  architect  responsible  for  building  your  house. 
His  troubles  with  plumbers  and  plasterers  and 
carpenters  and  painters  do  not  interest  you. 
You  want  results. 

An  advertiser  is  not  interested  in  the  meander- 
ing habits  of  printers'  delivery  boys.  He  does 
not  respond  to  the  details  of  how  a  negative  was 
spoiled  by  an  engraver.  He  cares  very  little  that 
a  form  arrived  at  the  electrotyper's  just  too  late 
to  go  into  the  ten  o'clock  bath.  The  fact  that  a 
composing  room  has  none  of  his  favorite  type 
makes  no  difference  to  him  whatever.  He  hears 
too  many  alibis  in  his  own  business  to  hear  those 
of  the  mechanical  side  of  advertising. 

He  deals  with  his  agency  and  his  agency  acts 
for  him  in  carrying  the  dead  weight  of  sheer 
metal. 


IX 

THE    RIGHT   WORD    IN   THE 
RIGHT    PLACE 


CHAPTER    IX 

THE  RIGHT  WORD  IN  THE  RIGHT 

PLACE 

A  WRITER  of  fiction  may  work  all  of  his  days, 
if  he  likes,  to  develop  a  style  of  his  own.  But  a 
writer  of  advertising  must  work  all  of  his  days, 
and  most  of  his  nights,  to  develop  a  different 
style  for  each  customer. 

It  is  perfectly  simple  when  you  stop  to  think 
of  it.  An  advertisement  should  look  and  sound 
like  the  firm  which  signs  it;  not  like  the  man  who 
writes  it.  It  should  catch  the  spirit  of  the  ad- 
vertiser's personality  and  should  reflect  that  per- 
sonality in  words  that  create  a  proper  picture. 
It  should  create  this  picture  so  simply  that  many 
will  grasp  it,  some  will  talk  about  it,  and  a  few 
will  act  upon  it. 

An  exclusive  jeweler  may  say:  ^'Your  inspec- 
tion is  invited." 

A  garage-keeper  may  say:  "  Come  in  and  look 
us  over." 

The  words  used  in  the  jeweler's  invitation 
help  to  create  a  picture  of  dignity,  taste  and  lux- 

177 


178  Making  Advertisements 


ury,  with  a  little  aloofness  as  befits  an  establish- 
ment where  everybody  isn't  welcome.  The 
words  used  in  the  garage-man's  invitation  give 
you  a  picture  of  a  man  in  jumpers  wiping  his 
hands  on  a  piece  of  waste.  Try  interchanging 
the  two  invitations  and  see  how  inappropriate 
they  become. 

Johnson  says  of  Gray's  Elegy:  ''It  abounds 
with  images  which  find  a  mirror  in  every  mind, 
and  with  sentiments  to  which  every  heart  re- 
turns an  echo." 

If  an  advertisement  can  even  remotely  ap- 
proach that  result  by  its  choice  of  words,  the 
argument  will  have  a  much  easier  time  of  it. 
For  the  words,  with  the  help  of  the  illustration 
and  the  typography,  set  the  stage. 

Every  one  who  sells  anything  knows  how  im- 
portant it  is  to  get  a  prospect  into  the  right  frame 
of  mind.  Many  successful  salesmen  diagnose 
moods  at  a  glance.  If  a  man  is  obviously  ner- 
vous, hurried  or  ill-natured,  they  get  away  from 
him  without  even  starting  their  argument.  If 
he  is  genial,  happy  about  something,  at  peace 
with  the  world  —  that  is  the  time  he  will  buy 
most  readily. 

So  it  is  apparent  that  an  advertisement,  which 


989  Neat  of 
Tn79,47J0 


MEN 


GIFTS  for  men — gifts 
that  surpass  in 
acceptability  the  conven- 
tional box  of  cigars  and 
the  unconventional  neck- 
ties are  always  to  be  had 
at  reasonable  prices  at 
Ovington's. 

OVINGTON'S 

"The  Gift  Shop  of  Fifth  Ave." 
314  Fifth  Av.,near32d  St. 


Sheffield  dinner  coffee  set. 
$20.00  to  $75.00 

THE  stately  charm  of 
good  Sheffield  is  com- 
pelling when  the  Sheffield 
is  new — but  absolutely 
irresistible  when  you've 
owned  it  and  used  it — 
and  lived  with  it.  For 
Christmas  Gifts  it  is  hard 
to  imagine  anything  finer. 

OVINGTON'S 

*'The  Gift  Shop  nfSthAve." 
3l4FifthAv.,near32dSt. 


724^Buddha  BooJcMdst  Pair  $3,50 

MEASURED  by  time, 
Ovington's  is  70 
years  old.  Measured  by 
its  wares,  Ovington's  is 
the  newest  shop  on  Fifth 
Avenue.  Measured  by  its 
charm,  it  is  the  most 
fashionable  shop — and 
measured  by  its  prices, 
Ovington's  is  the  most 
reasonable. 

OVINGTON'S 

"The  Gift  Shop  of  Fifth  Avenue" 

314  Fifth  Av..  near  32d  St. 


Good  taste  can  often  he  expressed  in  small  space  without  loss  of  strength. 
These  newspaper  advertisements  by  T.  L.  L.  Ryan  have  attracted  a  great 
deal  of  attention  by  selling  something  and  saying  something  at  once. 


i8o  Making  Advertisements 

has  no  way  of  readjusting  itself  to  a  prospect's 
mood,  must  also  seek  to  shape  its  approach  in  the 
way  that  will  be  most  likely  inviting  to  the  man 
whom  it  addresses. 

Therefore,  besides  reflecting  the  house  which 
signs  it,  an  advertisement  must  reflect  the  per- 
sonality of  the  person  whom  it  is  designed  to 
reach. 

''  Price  Concessions  on  Dining  Suites  "  might 
be  the  caption  on  a  furniture  store's  advertise- 
ment appealing  to  people  of  more-than-average 
means.  But  "  Dining-Room  Furniture  Cut  in 
Two!"  would  be  more  likely  to  interest  pur- 
chasers of  lower  grade  merchandise.  The 
problem  becomes  complex  as  soon  as  a  house  of 
established  dignity  and  standing  decides  to 
widen  its  market  beyond  the  limits  of  its  limou- 
sine trade.  It  must  decide  how  it  can  maintain 
its  prestige  and  still  be  interesting  to  a  less  lofty 
circle.  It  cannot  be  merely  snobbish,  for  many 
people  are  sensitive  about  trading  where  they 
fear  that  they  may  be  snubbed.  It  must  be  gen- 
uine, inviting  and  yet  aristocratic  —  all  at  once. 

On  one  of  its  calendars  the  telephone  company 
urges  its  customers  to  be  considerate,  add- 
ing: ^'  You  are  judged  by  what  you  say  and  how 


r^ 


OMNIA    OMNIBUS    UBIQ^UE 


8T  SPECIAL  APPOINTMENT 

TO  THEIB    MAJESTIC^ 

THE   KISG    AND  QVtKN 

or  TUE  BELGIANS 


BV  SPECIAL  APrOINTMEMT 
y|\  TO  H    U.  TUE  UUEEN  Or  NOHWaT 


-^Tir 


latin, 
as  St 


^[YaRRODS  trade-mark  signify- 
'l^  ing  everything  for  everybody 
^^^  everywhere.  Literal  as  well  as 
Store  covers  half  as  much  again 
Paul's,  embraces  two  hundred 
shops,  employs  six  thousand  people, 
sells  everything  from  candies  to  castles, 
trades  with  every  quarter  of  the  globe 
— a  granary,  a  vineyard,  a  bank,  a  de- 
positary, a  library,  an  atelier  of  fash- 
ions,a  saturnalia  ot  jewels, a  caravan  of 
silks,  a  crystal  palace  of  glass  and  por- 
celains, a  tea  shop,  a  tobacco  planta- 
tion, a  booking  office  for  theatres  and 
tours,  a  bureau  of  currency  exchange, 
a  world's  fair  for  the  world  that  fares 
here,  and  the  greatest  rendezvous  for 
Americans  stopping  and  shopping  in 
London. 

HARRODS  LT.° 

WOODMAN     BURBIDGE      Managing     Director 


x:muA 


Ton. 


^CNos  mre; 


im 


.--^lo-.^-iiil-'.. 


When  the  head  of  this  English  house  visited  America  this  year,  he  had 
the  good  sense  to  choose  an  American,  Frank  Irving  Fletcher,  to  write  his 
American  copy. 


The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place     i8i 

you  say  it."  When  you  realize  that  for  every 
one  who  knows  the  members  of  a  firm  person- 
ally, thousands  of  people  form  opinions  of  it 
from  its  advertising,  you  see  how  important  be- 
comes the  question  of  "  how  you  say  it." 

You  can  make  out  lists  of  words  —  like  charm, 
distinction,  breeding,  dominate,  exquisite,  dec- 
orative, culture,  replica  —  which  carry  an  im- 
pression of  high  prices.  You  can  make  out  an- 
other list  of  words  —  like  luck,  tinker,  sport, 
jump,  slip,  twist,  bounce,  which  slap  you  on  the 
back. 

Then  you  can  go  further  and  find  words  for 
*^  smack-your-lips  "  copy  —  like  crisp,  luscious, 
creamy,  delicious,  toasted,  golden,  piping-hot, 
appetizing,  flavory,  rich,  spicy,  plump,  tender, 
savory,  aroma,  piquante,  tempting,  juicy. 

The  danger  in  all  this  is  that  a  writer  of  copy 
falls  into  the  habit  of  using  just  about  the  same 
words,  or  the  same  sort  of  words,  in  every  piece 
of  advertising  that  he  prepares  for  an  advertiser. 

In  a  certain  advertising  agency  recently  a  list 
of  words  was  made  up  and  sent  to  every  man 
writing  copy  for  a  Fifth  Avenue  shop.  They 
were  told  that  those  words  must  not  appear  in 
that  advertiser's  copy  until  further  notice.     The 


i82  Making  Advertisements 

reason  was  that  a  distinct  style  of  copy  had 
been  struck  by  the  man  who  originated  the  copy 
and  those  who  came  after  him  thought  the  best 
thing  they  could  do  was  to  strike  the  same  note 
over  and  over  again. 

But  you  can't  make  a  melody  out  of  one  note. 
And  in  this  advertiser's  copy  a  few  words  like 
distinction,  charm  and  decorative  were  sadly  in 
need  of  a  rest.  When  this  rest  had  been  ob- 
tained for  a  while  through  conscious  avoidance, 
a  few  of  them  were  allowed  to  creep  back.  But 
meanwhile  the  advertiser's  vocabulary  had  been 
notably  enriched. 

All  of  this  discussion  of  suiting  the  word, 
particularly  the  adjective,  to  the  copy  ought  to 
be  unnecessary.  But  unfortunately  it  isn't.  If 
you  take  the  trouble  to  look  you  will  find  the 
same  nouns  and  adjectives  used  in  pieces  of  ad- 
vertising copy  as  different  as  steam  shovels  and 
steamed  puddings,  brass  polishes  and  brass  beds, 
shoes  for  men  and  shoes  for  motor  cars,  brake 
linings  and  skirt  linings. 

It's  not  necessary  to  strain  for  an  eflPect  in 
order  to  employ  words  that  are  appropriate. 
Too  often  all  of  one  man's,  and  even  all  of  one 
agency's,  copy  sounds  alike  only  because  it  is 


Break  it 


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When  this  advertisement  occupied  a  page  in  the  Saturday  Evening  Post, 
the  hand  appeared  in  red.  With  the  headline  it  told  the  story  at  a  glance. 
Calkins  l^  Holden  have  a  way  oj  doing  that. 


184  Making  Advertisements 

based  upon  no  more  intimate  knowledge  of 
products  than  can  be  obtained  from  a  study  of 
scrap-books  containing  past  performances. 

Take  these  three  headlines: 

^'  Every  Bump  a  Collision!  " 

*^  Here's  some  horse-sense  for  pipe-smokers." 

"  The  prettiest,  the  daintiest,  the  flimsiest.'' 

The  first  one  is  for  a  shock-absorber.  The 
second  is  for  a  pipe-tobacco.  And  the  third  is 
for  a  laundry  soap.  Every  noun  in  all  three  is 
appropriate  to  its  product.  The  first  two  are  as 
essentially  masculine  as  the  third  is  feminine. 
Each  one  is  in  character  not  only  with  the  prod- 
uct but  with  the  person  who  is  addressed. 

The  man  who  wrote  the  first  of  the  three  went 
even  further.  He  employed  what  the  old  high- 
brows used  to  call  onomatopoeia  and  what  the 
newer  philologists  call  echoism  —  ''the  forma- 
tion of  words  by  imitation  of  natural  sounds." 
Words  like  hiss,  hush,  click,  jingle,  clink,  drip 
—  yes,  and  bump  —  are  valuable  advertising 
words  because  they  say  something  and  create  a 
mental  picture  at  the  same  time. 

The  encyclopedia  will  tell  you  that  "  at  one 
time  there  was  an  exaggerated  tendency  to  find 
in  echoism  a  principal  source  in  the  origin  and 


The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place     185 

growth  of  language,  ridiculed  as  the  '  bow-wow  ' 
theory  of  language."  The  job  of  the  advertis- 
ing writer  would  be  infinitely  easier  if  the  bow- 
wow method  had  been  followed  by  those  who 
were  in  charge  of  manufacturing  our  language. 
Their  copy  could  be  entirely  composed  of  words 
looking  and  sounding  like  the  ideas  behind 
them.  Then  a  colorless  word  like  machine 
would  not  stand  ready  to  mean  anything  from  a 
hydraulic  press  to  a  typewriter.  Then  an  ad- 
jective like  charming  could  not  be  applied  to  a 
gown,  a  hotel  and  a  dessert.  It  would  have 
made  advertising  much  more  effective. 

It  is  both  difficult  and  dangerous,  at  best,  to 
attempt  to  point  out  definite  ways  of  achieving 
results  in  writing  advertising  copy.  Just  when 
a  rule  gets  itself  comfortably  established  in  the 
minds  of  most  advertising  men,  along  comes  a 
bright  young  copy  man  in  a  Western  agency  who 
proves  that  the  other  way  works  just  as  well. 
Precedents  are  acrobats.  And  in  a  business 
where  the  old  masters  are  still  able  to  play  a 
very  creditable  game  of  golf  it  is  natural  that 
most  men  have  worked  out  their  own  rules  and 
are  a  little  apt  to  sniff  at  the  ideas  of  others. 

A  salesman  for  a  course  in  business  training 


1 86  Making  Advertisements 

goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  only  way  he  can  sell 
an  advertising  man  is  with  this  solicitation: 

'^  Now,  I  want  you  to  promise  me  that  you 
won't  read  the  volumes  about  advertising. 
Frankly,  I'm  sure  that  you  wouldn't  agree  with 
them.  You  are  working  out  principles  every 
day  —  just  as  vital,  just  as  comprehensive,  just 
as  valuable  as  any  of  those  described  by  the  au- 
thors of  those  volumes.  But  the  rest  of  the 
course  will  interest  you,  for  there  is  much  that 
you  will  want  to  study  about  the  fundamentals 
of  cost  finding,  plant  management,  accounting, 
corporation  finance,  investments,  shipping,  cred- 
its, office  organization,  real  estate,  economics, 
banking  and  other  subjects  with  which  you 
aren't  so  familiar." 

And  then  he  picks  up  the  advertising  volumes, 
walks  to  an  open  window  and  says:  "  Suppose 
we  throw  these  books  away  now.  You  could 
write  better  ones  yourself." 

But  though  concrete  recommendations  may  be 
questioned  on  most  phases  of  advertising  writ- 
ing, in  the  choice  of  words  there  are  a  few  prin- 
ciples which  perhaps  may  be  set  down  with 
safety. 

First  it  is  well  to  choose  words  that  live  today 


The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place     187 


in  our  national  speech.  Words  which  appear 
only  in  books  do  not  lend  themselves  to  copy. 
They  are  too  selfish.  They  advertise  themselves 
instead  of  the  product. 

Certainly  it  is  preferable  to  choose  v^ords 
which  convey  an  idea  without  calling  attention 
to  themselves.  Occasionally  advertising  copy 
gets  very  pompous  —  usually  without  more  rea- 
son than  to  tickle  the  vanity  of  the  advertiser. 

"  There's  the  idea,"  one  manufacturer  used  to 
say,  after  he  had  explained  a  selling  point  to  his 
agency's  representative,  "  Now  you  put  in  the 
verbiage."  And  he  could  never  be  persuaded 
that  a  piece  of  copy  was  good  copy  unless  it  con- 
tained several  words  which  he  couldn't  under- 
stand. 

Another  advertiser  once  asked  one  of  his  buy- 
ers to  pass  upon  a  piece  of  copy.  The  buyer 
checked  up  all  the  prices  and,  in  addition,  ven- 
tured to  suggest  a  way  in  which  he  thought  the 
phrasing  could  be  improved. 

"Never  you  mind  about  that!"  shouted  the 
head  of  the  firm.  "  I  pay  that  writer  $10,000 
a  year  and  I  guess  he  knows  grammar!  " 

Frequently  the  writer  of  advertising  encoun- 
ters the  business  man  who  likes  to  declaim  copy. 


1 88  Making  Advertisements 

He  will  hold  an  advertisement  at  arm's  length 
and  recite  it  with  the  same  resounding  emphasis, 
and  very  likely  the  same  gestures,  that  he  em- 
ployed when  he  won  the  oratorical  contest  at 
high  school.  The  temptation  to  give  him  ade- 
quate material  is  very  great.  But  it  should  be 
shunned  if  the  advertising,  and  not  the  adver- 
tiser, is  expected  to  perform. 

Second,  a  wise  course  is  to  choose  the  word 
which  most  clearly  and  swiftly  conveys  its  mean- 
ing. This  is  not  always  the  short  word.  Take 
a  word  like  constitute;  it  is  really  shorter  than 
''  Go  to  make  up."  Innumerable  is  shorter  than 
'^  too  many  to  be  counted."  And  yet  the  longer 
word  carries  its  meaning  to  the  eye  more  swiftly 
than  several  short  words  with  the  same  meaning. 

Adam  Sherman  Hill  gave  both  of  these  ex- 
amples in  ''  The  Foundations  of  Rhetoric " 
which  every  writer  of  advertising  could  read  or 
re-read,  preferably  both,  with  great  profit. 

The  advantages  of  short  words  and  long  words 
are  clearly  described.  '^  In  a  single  instance," 
he  says,  '^  the  gain  in  time  and  space  is  not  large; 
but  in  a  chapter  or  a  volume,  the  saving  of  one 
syllable  out  of  every  twenty  or  every  hundred 
syllables  is  a  great  economy." 


The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place     189 

Certainly  no  principle  could  be  more  appli- 
cable to  advertising.     And  again: 

'^  Another  way  in  which  short  words  save  a 
reader's  time  is  by  diminishing  the  amount  of 
effort  needed  to  get  at  their  meaning.  They  are, 
as  a  rule,  more  readily  understood  than  longer 
words;  for  they  are  the  familiar  names  of  fa- 
miliar things  or  of  familiar  ideas  and  feelings. 
They  belong  less  to  literary  language  than  to 
living  speech." 

If  there  was  ever  a  form  of  writing  which 
ought  to  belong  .to  living  speech,  it  is  advertis- 
ing. For  no  form  of  writing  was  ever  intended 
more  directly  to  influence  methods  of  living. 

Third,  all  good  short  words  do  not  come  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon.  From  Latin  origin,  Hill 
tells  us,  come  such  useful  monosyllables  as  add, 
fact  and  mob.  From  the  French  come  cab, 
cash,  corps,  pork,  quart  and  zeal.  Duel  is  from 
the  Italian,  cask  and  cork  come  from  the 
Spanish,  gulp  and  yacht  from  the  Dutch,  shawl 
from  the  Persian,  and  shrub  and  tea  are  from  the 
Arabic  and  the  Chinese.  When  the  choice  lies 
between  an  Anglo-Saxon  word  and  one  from, 
say,  the  Icelandic,  no  doubt  the  Anglo-Saxon 
will  tell  its  story  more  quickly,,  but  the  writer 


190  Making  Advertisements 

who  too  rigidly  confines  himself  to  Anglo-Saxon 
words  is  like  a  golfer  who  uses  his  irons  from  the 
tee.  The  rest  of  his  shots  have  got  to  cover  a 
lot  of  distance. 

Fourth,  the  temptation  to  decorate  copy  with 
fine  writing  should  be  throttled.  Many  begin- 
ners in  copy-writing  are  unable  to  resist  the  urge 
to  write  to  please  themselves.  The  sentences 
swerve  them  off  the  highways  of  their  argument 
and  lead  them  into  delightful  lanes  of  self-in- 
dulgence. They  forget  that  they  are  selling  mer- 
chandise and  revel  in  the  joys  of  stringing 
words  together  like  colored  beads. 

One  such  writer  was  especially  persistent  in 
writing  to  please  himself.  It  took  months  to 
discourage  him,  to  make  him  see  that  his  copy 
should  sell  something  instead  of  preening  itself. 
Two  or  three  years  after  he  began,  his  chief 
asked  him  one  day  whether  he  realized  how 
much  his  writing  had  improved. 

"  Sure/'  he  answered,  "  but  it  isn't  half  as 
much  fun  for  me." 

A  generation  ago  the  rhetoricians  quarreled 
with  the  newspapers  for  using  "  long  words  in 
order  to  give  an  air  of  magnificence  to  the  petty 
or  the  mean."     Recently  this  tendency  is  con- 


High  Sign 
of  Orlasido 


Behold — the  "Sign  of  the  Urgent  C7"— a  signal  specially 
created  by  the  Order  of  Orlando  for  use  in  the  great  member* 
ship  drive  now  in  progress. 

It  means  "U  Join  Us" — an  invitation  to  the  wandering  smoker 
to  join  the  Order  of  Orlando— to  enter  the  mystic  Arena  of  Aroma 
and  to  leam  the  secret  of  a  good  cigar. 

heed  this  sage  counsel,  Friend — and  waste  no  time.  Go  now, 
and  C7nite  with  C/nited,  the  stores  where  Orlando  presides.  Let 
Orlando  teach  you  a  dew  degree  of  cigar  satisfactioa 


9?fe  Sign  of  a  Good  Cigar 


Thousands  of  men  are  en- 
rolled in  the  Order  every  day 
—men  who  have  seen  the  wis- 
dom of  smoking  Orlando — the 
cigar  that  combines  quality 
with  economy.  There's  a  c/iar- 
acfer  about  this  rich,  mild  cigar 
that  makes  friends  the  minute 


you've  experienced  Its  sooth- 
ing charm.  Everything  about 
Orlando  is  just  what  you've 
always  hoped  to  find  in  a  cigar— 
and  most  always  hoped  in  vain. 
U— join  the  Order  today,  Friend, 
and  Jeam  what  thousands  of 
men  have  learned  already  I 


IiivbcibI«size.2(or27«    Box  of  2S.  U2S-S0,  l&SO 

Orlando  comes  in  ten  sizes— 10c  to  ISc.  Little  Orlando  6c 

Ten  sizes  enable  us  to  use  a  fine  grade  of  tobacco  without 

waste — the  secret  of  high  quality  at  low  prices. 

Orlando  is  sold  oaly  in  United  Cigar  Stores— "  7%anJI:  jroa/" 

UNITED  CIGAR  STORES 


One  of  a  series  by  the  Federal  Advertising  Agency  creating  a  distinct 

personality. 


192  Making  Advertisements 


fined  to  small  town  papers,  but  it  is  interesting  to 
find  that  Lowell  found  the  newspapers  guilty 
of  speaking  of  ^'  a  disastrous  conflagration " 
when  they  meant  a  fire,  of  ''  calling  into  requisi- 
tion the  services  of  the  family  physician  "  when 
they  meant  sending  for  the  doctor,  and  of  "  ten- 
dering him  a  banquet "  when  they  meant  asking 
him  to  dine. 

Hill  found  in  the  newspapers  of  his  day  the 
same  tendency.  He  found  ''  floral  tribute  "  in- 
stead of  flowers,  "  lack  of  finances  "  instead  of 
poverty,  ''  itinerant  merchant "  instead  of  ped- 
dler, ''  convertible  into  cash  "  instead  of  money 
value,  '^  united  in  the  holy  bonds  of  matrimony  " 
instead  of  married,  and  ''  piscatorial  sport "  in- 
stead of  fishing.  And  that  was  nearly  thirty 
years  ago. 

Today,  in  advertising,  in  the  attempt  to 
throw  individuality  around  merchandise,  there 
is  a  similar  danger.  You  will  find  a  washing 
machine  called  a  mechanical  laundress.  Men's 
clothes  are  referred  to  as  exclusive  apparel  for 
gentlemen.  Tailors  are  called  drapers  and  civil- 
ian clothes  are  described  as  mufti. 

Often  the  use  of  stately  words  will  be  de- 
fended on  the  ground  that  they  help  to  create 


The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place     193 

atmosphere.  But  sometimes  stilted  forms  lead 
to  trouble  as  they  did  in  the  case  of  the  jewelry 
house  which  advertised:  "Blank  &  Co. — 
Watches  for  women  of  exclusive  design  and  dis- 
tinctive appearance.''  Don  Marquis  clipped 
that  advertisement  for  "  The  Sun  Dial,"  his 
column  in  the  New  York  Evening  Sun,  and 
added  the  heading  "  So  do  we  all." 

Fifth,  foreign  words,  particularly  French 
words,  have  a  use  in  advertising  which  would 
not  be  sanctioned  in  other  forms  of  writing.  In 
fashions  the  skilful  use  of  French,  particularly 
if  you  make  it  so  simple  that  the  English  mean- 
ing can  be  guessed  by  most  people,  helps  to  com- 
plete the  picture.  One  perfume  manufacturer's 
copy  was  entirely  written  in  French  and  then,  as 
if  as  an  afterthought,  the  English  translation  was 
added.  It  was  quite  a  game  for  the  girls  —  see- 
ing how  much  they  could  understand  without 
referring  to  the  explanation.  And  it  helped  to 
sell  a  lot  of  perfume.  A  big  department  store  in 
New  York  goes  so  far  as  to  use  French  headings 
for  many  of  its  fashion  advertisements.  It  gives 
French  names  to  some  of  its  departments,  and 
has  French  writers  on  its  advertising  staff.  Why 
not? 


194  Making  Advertisements 

Sixth,  the  use  of  figurative  words  has  a  real 
place  in  advertising — if  you  don't  mix  your 
figures.  Our  speech  today  is  full  of  figures  of 
speech  and  a  lot  of  business  men  do  not  realize 
that  they  use  expressions  which  once  were 
poetry. 

They  speak  of  driving  a  bargain,  of  a  sharp 
voice,  of  fleecy  clouds,  of  a  wild  idea,  of  digest- 
ing a  report,  of  a  striking  remark.  And  every 
italicised  word  was  first  used  in  that  sense  by 
some  unbusinesslike  soul  like  Shelley  or  Keats  or 
Tennyson. 

From  Dr.  Johnson's  "  Life  of  Addison,"  Hill 
quotes  this  passage: 

"  Fired  with  that  name, 
I  bridle  In  my  Struggling  muse  with  pain, 
That  longs  to  launch  Into  a  nobler  strain. 

"  *  To  bridle  a  goddess,'  roars  the  old  Doctor,  *  Is 
no  very  delicate  idea;  but  why  must  she  be  bridled? 
Because  she  longs  to  launch;  an  act  which  was  never 
hindered  by  a  bridle:  and  whither  will  she  launch? 
Into  a  nobler  strain.  She  Is  In  the  first  line  a  horse, 
in  the  second  a  boat;  and  the  care  of  the  poet  is  to 
keep  his  horse  or  his  boat  from  singing.'  " 

And  here  are  three  other  instances  by  less  dis- 
tinguished writers: 


The  Right  Word  in  the  Right  Place     195 


'*  Reports  indicate  that  the  backbone  of  the  cold 
wave  is  broken." 

"  Carlo  received  severe  injuries  at  the  hands  of 
a  bull-dog." 

"  A  sea  of  upturned  faces  was  watching  the  bulle- 
tins, shouting  and  hissing  as  each  new  return  came 


in;* 


If  a  figure  of  speech  is  intended  to  create  a 
picture  before  the  eye,  the  difficulty  here  seems 
to  be  that  these  v^riters  were  producing  a  whole 
movie  scenario. 

To  sum  it  up,  suppose  we  take  a  paragraph 
directly  from  Hill  himself: 

"  If,  in  short,  a  writer  sincerely  wishes  to  com- 
municate to  another  mind  what  is  in  his  own  mind, 
he  will  choose  that  one  of  two  or  more  words  equally 
In  good  use  which  expresses  his  meaning  as  fully 
as  it  Is  within  the  power  of  language  to  express  It. 
If  he  wishes  to  be  understood,  he  will  choose  the 
word  that  points  straight  to  the  object  It  represents, 
and  to  nothing  else.  If  he  wishes  also  to  Interest  or 
to  move  his  reader,  he  will  choose  the  word  that  ex- 
cites the  desired  feeling,  either  directly  or  Indirectly 
—  by  what  it  means,  or  by  what  It  suggests  through 
the  association  of  Ideas.  In  every  case,  he  will 
choose  the  word  that  calls  least  attention  to  Itself  as 
a  word,  and  thus  enables  the  reader  to  give  his  whole 
mind  to  what  it  signifies  or  suggests." 


THE    CAMPAIGN 


THE    CAMPAIGN 

A  MAN  who  was  discussing  a  proposed  adver- 
tising campaign  said  the  other  day: 

"  Now,  our  business  is  peculiar." 

That  man  had  the  first  qualification  of  becom- 
ing a  regular  advertiser.  He  had  grouped  all 
business  into  two  classes :  his  own  and  others. 

Advertising  men  hear,  from  day  to  day,  that 
the  furniture  business  is  peculiar,  that  the  book 
publishing  business  is  peculiar,  that  the  china 
business,  the  insurance  business,  the  shoe  busi- 
ness, the  real  estate  business,  the  collar  business, 
the  rug  business,  the  men's  clothing  business  — 
that  all  these  businesses  are  peculiar.  To  which 
the  answer  is,  of  course,  that  the  most  peculiar 
business  in  the  world  is  the  advertising  business. 

It  is  most  peculiar  because  it  must  recognize 
the  peculiarities  in  other  businesses  without 
being  blinded  to  the  great  fundamentals  which 
underlie  all  of  them. 

All  businesses  have  in  common  the  elements 
of   production   and   distribution.     Administra- 

109 


200  Making  Advertisements 

tion  is  a  part  of  production  just  as  selling  is  a  part 
of  distribution. 

One  manufacturer  may  send  his  own  salesmen 
direct  to  the  trade  and  another  may  sell  to  job- 
bers and  be  unable  to  tell  what  happens  to  his 
product  after  that.  One  advertiser  may  manu- 
facture his  merchandise  from  raw  materials  and 
another  advertiser  may  be  only  the  selling  agent 
for  a  factory  or  a  group  of  factories.  One  man 
may  advertise  a  product  which  is  bought  every 
day  by  millions  of  men  or  women  and  another 
may  advertise  a  product  which  the  consumer 
never  consciously  buys  —  like  the  piston  ring  of 
an  automobile  cylinder  —  and  which  is  bought 
once  or  twice  a  year  by  only  a  handful  of  men. 

And  yet  so  elastic  and  powerful  is  the  force 
called  advertising  that  it  can  be  made  to  serve 
the  purposes  of  all  these  advertisers  in  all  the 
permutations  of  their  industries. 

One  after  another  the  business  men  of  this 
country  have  discovered  that  they  too  can  use 
this  force  which  has  helped  men  in  other  lines 
of  business.  The  history  of  advertising  in  this 
country  has  been  the  awakening  of  one  industry 
after  another. 

For  generations  bankers  thought  they  couldn't 


In  his  copy  for  the  Columbia 
Trust  Company,  J.  K.  Fraser 
has  proved  that  a  bank's  adver- 
tisement can  be  as  interesting 
and  comprehensive  as  any 
merchant's. 


I 


Ingenious  Mr.  B 

How  he  plans 
to  provide  for  hid  fanuly 


Mr.  B..  53  jFwn  old.  •tiried,  wiib    tw*   ckUdm, 
tus  accumuUied  A5$.000  is  New  Y«rk  nd  «ut0 


Now  thit  Ml.  B.  hu  oud*  a  good  ttut  \n  Itfc.  bs 
ulU  tu  be  U  chieflj  cooccmed  about  bi*  CubUj  — 
"in  cate  anjthing  iboold  bappoa.** 

Id  tbia  frame  of'toljid,  be  re»d  reoeetly  ooe  of  our 
ad*ertueincnU  •dvocatiog  Tmsl  Fnads.  It  bdped 
bim  cTjfulIixe  ui  Idea  tb«t  be  had.  Be  caaa 
lo  ice  <u  aboot  il. 

TUftU  wbat^.B.dldt 

He  put  hia  t35.000  into  •  Trvt  Food  wbicfa  pr^ 
ridf*  for  the  foUowiiig^ 

The  Tnut  Companj  will  iaveal  tbe  prioatpal  ui 
•oand  aecorttiew  aod  coUe<t  tbo  iaooae-^^-approxi* 
matelj  91800.  Oot  of  thu  the  Company  will  pay  «o 
annual  premium  of  91325  on  950,000  life  inau/uice 
wbicb  Ur.  B.  baa  taken  oot    «j  pth  of  bia  plan. 

'Qxia  leave*  a  marpn  of  about  947S  wbicb  tba 
Tnut  Companj  wdl  credit  to  Ur.  6*«  chec^inf  aooonsX 
cacb  jear 

Reaoltt 

On  faU  deatb,  Mr.  B*a  eatata  will  at  leMl  aaovat  to 
150,000  inaonnce  plua  tbe  Taloe  of  tfa«  Tnut  Faod, 
making  an  aaaored  total  of  $85,000. 

Bat  Mr.  B.  waa  too  far-aigbted  to  pot  tbe  rcapoo* 
tibility  of  inTcatiog  ao  large  a  aom  upon*  his  wife. 
Inatead,  be  baa  arranged  in  bia  will  to  have  bia  eatate 
*'put  in  Tmat.*  Tbua,  ibroagb  -tbe  Tniat  CoBpanr, 
hia  wife  wiH  receive  a  aieAdj  incooie  for  life.  Or,  if 
the  cbildrcn  aboold  aorrtre  ber,  tbe  eatau  U  to  be 
divided  between  them,  wbei^  the  jounger,  now  a  Utile 
gill  of  three,  beoomea  of  age. 

In  paaaiDg  tbia  oommoo-aenae  plaa  ea  to  jou,  we 
ftUggcst  that  you  look  further  into 

A  COLUMBU  TRUST  FUND 
for  safeguarding  the  money  you  Uax^ 

The  plan  ia  tbia; 

1.  A  Colombia  Trust  Faad  is  aiciply  mtrmrj  td  ati^la 
a&der  tbe  proCectioo  <U  die  CoHnabis  Tniit  Conpuy 
and  LarcMod  u  provide  asrared  taoMDe  (or  de&aiu 
objects. 

2.  Life  bu«rsaee  or  C07  other  aiolMy  may  b«  osad  to 
fona  tb«  Tnui  Famd.  Ve  ire  boand  hj  ■  wrioca 
B^Tcmcot  to  carry  ami  yoor  viihm  defcately  and 


3.  Ve  wiD  make  inveacaeBts  of  the  Trast  FoaJ  fat 
yoa  in  such  aeca/toes  ai  are  UWul  Eoir  TnMiin.  or. 
if  yoQ  prefct.'yea  can  f^t  as  dc£aka  fawpaetis^i 
lofoibm. 

4.  laeoae  &om  tba  Tnut  Toad  viU  b«  paid  la  lastall. 
mentt  ta  tc^am  yon  wlAb  aad  wAcn  yon  wbk  sad 
ia  th«  wmemni  yoa  wl»^ 

Toe  csa  taka  ap  tbii  natur  al  aay  of  oar  ofieaa.  Raasa 
•tk  (or  tbe  Vk«-Pr««i<irat  or  Kaaa^n  ia  chttft.  Be  •riU 
b«  glad  to  talk  wub  fou  pfnoaallj  had  prooipdy  —  of 
o>ur««  taitkout  obLjaiMD  oa  your  pari. 


IN  tMoa^mc 


:vx, 


TRUST 
COMPANY 


^ 


202  Making  Advertisements 

advertise.  Their  business  was  peculiar.  There 
would  be  a  run  on  any  institution  which  so  far 
forgot  its  dignity  as  openly  to  solicit  business. 
The  idea  was,  apparently,  that  each  bank  was 
supposed  to  hold  at  all  times  just  as  much  money 
as  it  could  accommodate  without  bursting. 

In  the  past  ten  years  this  has  changed.  Some 
of  the  most  intelligent  advertising  now  appear- 
ing is  signed  by  the  strongest  financial  institu- 
tions in  this  country. 

Insurance  companies  are  only  just  beginning 
to  emerge,  as  a  class,  into  the  field  of  advertising. 
Accountants  still  have  more  reticence  than  the 
nature  of  their  work  warrants.  They  are  selling 
a  service  no  more  confidential  than  a  banker's. 
It  is  difficult  to  think  of  any  business  which  can- 
not be  advertised.  No,  that's  an  exaggeration. 
Doctors  shouldn't  advertise ;  the  good  ones  have 
more  than  they  can  do  now  and  the  poor  ones 
shouldn't  be  told  how  to  increase  their  scope. 
And  burglars  shouldn't  either.  It  would  be 
fatal.  That's  one  business  that  is  peculiar. 
Stock  exchange  houses  have  very  excellent  rea- 
sons for  conservatism,  but  a  few  of  them  have 
discovered  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  engage  in 
bucket  shop  language  in  order  to  do  something 


The  Campaign  203 

more  than  converse  in  code  with  one  another  as 
most  of  them  still  do. 

As  each  new  industry  has  emerged  from  the 
great  silence,  the  pioneers  have  passed  through 
certain  stages  in  their  attitude  toward  making 
advertisements.  First  their  copy  was  confined 
to  the  good  old  ^'  John  Jones,  M.  D."  school  of 
card  advertising.  Then  some  bright  bookkeeper 
or  useless  relative  devised  a  few  snappy  phrases 
like  "  Ours  is  best  —  why  buy  the  rest?  "  Com- 
bined with  the  firm  name  and  the  trade-mark 
and  set  by  the  printer's  devil  at  the  local  news- 
paper office  this  advertising  marked  a  distinct 
advance.  Possibly  a  fancy  rule  border  and  one 
or  two  ornaments  of  pointing  hands  or  conven- 
tionalized bay  trees  were  thrown  in  for  good 
measure  if  they  were  within  reach  of  the  young 
compositor. 

Years  elapse.  Part  three  will  follow  imme- 
diately. One  day  the  advertiser  sees  one  of  his 
competitors  saying  something  in  his  advertising. 
This  is  unprecedented.  Inquiry  reveals  the 
news  that  an  advertising  firm  has  prepared  the 
new  copy. 

Eventually  an  advertising  man  sits  in  the  old 
factory  office,  listening  to  the  head  of  the  house 


204  Making  Advertisements 

as  he  explains  the  product's  manufacture  and  its 
sale. 

"  Now,  the  first  thing  for  you  to  remember," 
he  begins,  ''  is  that  our  business  is  peculiar.'' 

Then  begins  the  task  of  getting  both  view- 
points into  the  firm's  advertising.  The  manu- 
facturer sees  his  product  from  the  inside.  He 
may  be  so  close  to  it  that  he  can  get  no  perspec- 
tive on  it.  That  is  his  danger.  The  advertising 
man  sees  the  product  from  the  outside.  He  may 
be  so  far  from  it  that  he  has  no  knowledge  of  it. 
That  is  his  danger.  The  problem  is  to  get  an  in- 
side-outside  viewpoint  so  that  the  consumer,  who 
may  be  assumed  to  know  nothing  whatever  about 
the  product  and  to  care  less,  can  be  told  intelli- 
gently how  he  must  come  to  think  about  it. 

"  We  look  at  the  stars,"  says  Sir  Rabindranath 
Tagore,  *'  and  they  seem  to  be  still ;  we  look  at 
the  earth  and  it  seems  to  be  flat.  Yet  we  know 
that  the  stars  are  rushing  through  space  and  that 
the  earth  is  really  a  ball." 

With  one  we  are  too  far  away,  like  the  con- 
sumer. With  the  other  we  are  too  close,  like 
the  manufacturer. 

There  is  a  simple  and  valid  reason  for  the  ad- 
vertiser's desire  to  have  his  advertising  prepared 


Your  Speech  to  the 
Wool  Club 

Suppose  you  are  asked  to  make  an  address  to  the 
Tide- Water  Association  or  to  the  annual  banquet  of 
the  Lapidary  Employers'  Board, 

It  is  a  matter  of  great  moment;  you  write  and  rewrite 
your  remarks  and  rehearse  all  the  details.  It  may  even 
entail  a  new  dress  coat  and  the  finishing  touches  of  a 
professional  coach. 

And- yet  at  most,  you  will  actually  talk  to  no  more 
than  two  thousand  people  directly  and  perhaps  three 
times  that  number  through  reprints  in  the  trade  press. 

Are  you  equally  careful  of  your  speech  to  millions 
in  the  advertising  columns? 

Do  you  employ  the  best  brains  without  stint  to 
prepare  your  messages? 

These  messages  of  yours  do  not  go  to  hundreds  at 
a  banquet-table;  they  go  to  millions  in  the  homes,  and 
when  your  chance  comes  to  speak  to  a  whole  nation, 
if  it  be  only  for  two  minutes,  you  ought  to  have  the 
best  speech-maker  in  the  nation  as  your  mentor. 

When  you  advertise  nationally,  employ  experts  to  pre- 
pare your  speech — your  message — your  advertisement. 

Publishers  are  in  a  position  to  appreciatjs  the  best 
work  of  the  leading  agencies. 

Advertising  space  in  the  Butterick  publications 
is  for  sale  by  accredited  advertising  agencies. 

Butteric  k — Publisher 

The  Delineator 
Everybody's  Magazine 

Two  dollars  the  year  each 


The  newspaper  campaign  of  Butterick,  conceived  and  mostly  written  by 
Stanley  Latshaw,  has  done  incalculable  good  for  Advertising.  In  words  of 
one  syllable  it  has  explained  the  sound  fundamentals  of  the  business  with 
vigor y  simplicity  —  and  a  smile. 


2o6  Making  Advertisements 

by  some  one  trained  in  observation  and  in  writ- 
ing.    It  is  this: 

You  put  an  advertisement  in  a  newspaper  or  a 
magazine  and  it  immediately  goes  into  competi- 
tion with  the  best  writing  brains  of  the  country. 
More  than  that,  the  writers  of  editorial  material 
have  an  advantage  at  the  start.  The  public  buys 
the  newspaper  or  the  magazine  for  its  editorial 
contents. 

Now  imagine  an  advertisement  coming  in 
competition  with  the  human,  timely,  vivid  words 
in  the  headlines  and  columns  of  a  newspaper  or 
with  the  stories,  articles  and  pictures  of  the  high- 
est paid  authors  and  artists  in  the  country. 

The  trained  writer  of  advertising  applies  to 
business  the  same  knowledge  of  human  emotions 
that  the  newspaper  man  applies  to  current  events 
and  the  author  to  fiction.  Imagine  such  an  ad- 
vertisement written  by  a  man  whose  chief  exer- 
cise in  composition  consists  of  dictating  letters 
that  start:  "Yours  of  the  tenth  at  hand  and  in 
reply  would  say." 

Yet  the  writing  of  advertising  looks  easy.  It's 
one  of  those  jobs  which  every  man  in  his  heart 
thinks  he  could  do  better  than  the  man  who's  do- 
ing it  —  like  running  a  hotel,  producing  a  musi- 


The  Campaign  207 


cal  comedy  and  editing  a  newspaper.  A  dis- 
tinguished author  once  told  about  writing  an  ad- 
vertisement for  a  friend  who  manufactured  tooth 
brushes.  He  said  that  for  days  he  wrestled  with 
himself  for  the  very  salvation  of  his  soul  before 
he  produced  anything  he  would  show.  And 
when  he  finally  showed  it  do  you  think  it  was 
used?  It  certainly  was.  But  that  author  con- 
fessed that  no  essay  or  short  story  that  he  had 
ever  written  called  for  thinking  of  so  many 
things  at  once  as  that  advertisement,  and  he 
honestly  believed  that  it  was  one  of  the  best 
pieces  of  writing  he  had  ever  done. 

He  said  so  very  frankly,  for  he  was  not  afflicted 
by  the  curious  patronizing  attitude  which  many 
persons  of  limited  literary  ability  feel,  or  affect 
to  feel,  toward  commercial  work.  There  is  a 
certain  type  of  mind  which  feels  that  it  con- 
stantly must  vindicate  itself  on  its  contact  with 
business.  In  some  newspaper  offices  and  pub- 
lishing houses  this  attitude  may  be  traced  back 
to  the  day  when  the  ''  must  "  order  from  the  busi- 
ness office  was  received  by  the  editorial  depart- 
ment in  righteous  indignation. 

Today  it  is  usually  a  pose  assumed  by  persons 
who  feel  that  a  disorderly  desk  is  a  mark  of  in- 


2o8  Making  Advertisements 

tellect  and  that  a  knowledge  of  the  simple  funda- 
mentals of  business  is  to  be  disowned.  It  is  an 
odd  survival  of  the  day  when  a  person  who  wrote 
was  regarded  as  queer  and  believed  that  he  must 
live  up  to  his  part. 

There  are  numberless  men  of  high  attainments 
now  engaged  only  in  commercial  writing  —  men 
who,  like  the  editorial  writers  of  newspapers,  are 
satisfied  to  remain  anonymous  because  their 
greatest  pleasure  is  the  knowledge  of  the  influ- 
ence that  they  are  exerting  over  their  fellow- 
men. 

Occasionally  an  artist  who  finds  that  he  cannot 
support  his  family  by  drawing  for  the  editorial 
pages  seeks  to  enter  the  advertising  field  with  an 
apology  for  prostituting  his  talents.  He  finds 
the  field  in  the  possession  of  very  astute  business 
men  who  look  like  lawyers  or  bond  salesmen  or 
any  other  group  of  aggressive,  clean-cut  business 
men  and  whose  ability  to  draw  is  in  inverse  ratio 
to  the  length  of  their  hair  and  ties. 

They  give  value  for  value  received.  They 
make  a  picture  according  to  specifications  just  as 
an  architect  makes  his  plans  to  suit  the  family  of 
his  client.  They  assume  that  advertisers  are  ra- 
tional human  beings  who  pay  well  and  expect 


The  Campaign  209 

sensible  cooperation  instead  of  temperament. 
The  entrance  of  some  of  our  greatest  painters  and 
illustrators  into  advertising  work  has  completely 
changed  the  aspect  of  our  bill-boards. 

Recently  a  magazine  writer  with  a  large  na- 
tional following  decided  that  the  unsettled  life 
of  a  free  lance  was  not  building  anything  for 
him.  His  earlier  training  had  been  in  a  pub- 
lishing house  where  he  had  observed  the  mak- 
ing of  advertisements.  He  decided  to  enter  the 
advertising  agency  business. 

A  friend  of  his  asked  him  why  in  the  world  he 
should  go  into  a  business  of  so  many  perplexi- 
ties and  worries  when  he  had  already  reached 
a  point  of  literary  independence.  This  was  his 
answer : 

"  I  know  that  very  likely  I  can  always  find  a 
market  for  my  stories.  But  I'm  tired  of  living 
in  a  world  of  unrealities.  Business  today  is  the 
most  fascinating  study  on  earth.  Contact  with 
men  who  are  originating  business  projects, 
changing  the  habits  of  their  countrymen,  fighting 
through  difficulties,  is  infinitely  more  worth- 
while than  sitting  off  somewhere  alone  writing 
about  imaginary  people  doing  imaginary  things." 

And  today  that  man  finds  greater  satisfaction, 


2IO  Making  Advertisements 

he  says,  in  writing  the  story  of  a  great  business 
institution's  progress  than  he  ever  found  in  pur- 
suing Mabel  and  Harold  through  the  vicissitudes 
of  their  courtship  to  the  end  of  the  chapter. 

There  are  at  least  three  ways  to  write  adver- 
tising. One  is  to  read  all  the  printed  matter 
previously  written  about  a  subject,  go  through 
all  the  scrap-books  of  advertisements  already 
run,  and  then  rewrite  the  material  thus  obtained. 

Some  men  honestly  feel  that  they  can  do  their 
best  work  in  this  way,  for  they  say  that  they  can 
build  upon  the  work  already  done  by  others. 
Certainly  there  is  something  to  be  gained  by  dis- 
covering what  not  to  do,  but  if  a  man's  inquiry 
preliminary  to  writing  copy  is  confined  to  study- 
ing precedents,  he  will  have  difficulty  in  getting 
a  fresh  viewpoint.  He  will  find  phrases  sticking 
in  his  mind.  Angles  of  approach  devised  by 
others  and  proved  moderately  successful  will 
keep  looming  up. 

Another  way  is  to  depend  upon  inspiration. 
There  may  have  been  a  time  when  the  prepara- 
tion of  copy  could  be  done  by  inspiration. 
Horn-rimmed  glasses  had  quite  a  vogue  in  our 
best  copy  departments.  There  may  have  been 
a  day  when  an  advertising  writer  could  look  at 


The  Campaign  211 

the  ceiling  a  moment,  jot  down  a  few  quick 
words  and  then  exclaim: 

"  There,  Mr.  McGillicuddy!  That's  the  best 
possible  slogan  for  your  kippered  herring!" 
But  that  day  has  passed.  Today  advertisements 
have  to  sell  goods  and  create  good  will. 

A  few  years  ago  an  advertising  man  opened 
an  agency  in  which  the  chief  attraction  was  an 
art  department  in  which  all  the  artists  were 
ranged  at  drawing  boards  beside  the  windows, 
all  dressed  in  sky-blue  smocks  and  wearing  Per- 
sian orange  tam-o'-shanters.  This  advertising 
man  called  his  office  his  "  study."  He  said  that 
these  surroundings  helped  him  find  inspiration. 
But,  as  a  general  thing,  a  musical  comedy  back- 
ground cannot  be  said  to  be  conducive  to  good 
copy. 

The  third  way  is  to  start  fresh.  See  the  fac- 
tory. Try  the  product.  Learn  to  know  the  men 
who  make  it.  Try  it  out  on  people.  Find  out 
for  yourself  how  good  it  is.    Get  excited  about  it. 

Then,  instead  of  having  a  campaign  seem  like 
a  chore  that  must  be  done,  it  will  simply  be  a 
question  of  how  soon  and  how  fast  you  can  get 
your  ideas  down  on  paper. 

In  the  newspaper  business  it  is  recognized  that 


212  Making  Advertisements 

a  man  who  gets  his  facts  at  first-hand  can  write 
with  infinitely  greater  vividness  than  a  man  who 
doesn't.  Men  in  the  office  are  sent  out  on  assign- 
ments to  see  and  hear  with  their  own  eyes  and 
ears. 

*^  Were  you  there?  How  did  he  look  when 
he  said  that?  What  kind  of  place  does  he  live 
in?  Did  you  see  his  family?  How  old  a  man  is 
he?  Does  he  look  prosperous?  "  the  city  editors 
ask.  Just  as  direct  and  intimate  questions  about 
a  product  ought  to  be  answered  by  an  advertis- 
ing writer  before  he  sits  down  to  write. 

Many  advertising  men  have  come  to  believe 
that  a  lot  of  sincerity  and  strength  may  be  miss- 
ing from  advertising  copy  if  one  man  talks  to 
the  advertiser  and  another  man  writes  the  copy. 
Ail  the  fire  and  inspiration  of  personal  contact  is 
lost.  Instructions  are  often  misinterpreted. 
Too  frequently  the  object  is  to  get  an  O.  K.  on 
an  advertisement  rather  than  to  make  it  sell  mer- 
chandise and  create  an  accurate  picture  of  the 
businesses  personality.  Certainly  it  is  safer  to 
say  that  a  sincere  note  will  be  obtained  at  first 
hand. 

After  the  maker  of  advertisements  has  dug  out 
his  facts,  visualized  and  planned  his  advertise- 


The  Campaign  213 

ments,  assembled  his  layouts  and  written  his 
copy  —  then  comes  the  most  critical  time  in  the 
life  of  an  advertisement.  It  is  when  he  sits  down 
with  the  advertiser  to  go  over  what  has  been  pre- 
pared. 

In  every  field  in  which  writing  is  done,  except 
advertising,  revision  is  quite  as  much  a  matter  of 
training  as  creation. 

Chester  Lord,  who  was  for  thirty-five  years 
managing  editor  of  The  Sun,  said  the  other  day 
that  he  had  known  only  three  or  four  good  copy- 
readers  in  his  experience. 

^'  To  change  another  man's  writing,"  said  he, 
"  and  do  it  constructively,  a  man  must  put  him- 
self into  the  writer's  attitude  of  mind  —  snap- 
ping out  a  word  here  or  touching  up  a  phrase 
there.  Merely  to  make  it  conform  to  your  own 
ideas  isn't  editing.  You  must  keep  the  best  and 
cut  only  the  deadwood !  " 

No  one  will  ever  know  how  many  brilliant 
copy  ideas  have  been  lost  to  the  advertisingworld 
only  because  the  wrong  man  had  the  power  of 
life  and  death,  chiefly  death,  over  them.  When 
a  startling  idea  appears  in  a  concern's  advertis- 
ing, something  as  new  as  "  Spotless  Town  "  or 
the  ^'  Prince  Albert  "  smoking  tobacco  series,  ad- 


214  Making  Advertisements 


vertisers  immediately  shout:  "  That's  the  sort  of 
thing  we  want!  " 

Yet  many  advertising  men  will  tell  you  that 
when  they  suggest  radical  innovations  in  an  ad- 
vertiser's copy,  the  usual  first  comment  is: 
"  Well,  you  know  this  is  a  very  conservative 
house  and  we  have  to  be  very  careful  to  preserve 
our  dignity."  One  agency  man  once  said  that 
advertisers  had  two  reasons  for  refusing  copy  — 
either  that  it  had  been  done  too  often  or  that  it 
had  never  been  done  before. 

But  the  answer  seems  to  be  that  too  many  new 
ideas  are  submitted  in  a  half-baked  condition 
and  that  the  man  entrusted  with  spending  the 
hard-earned  cash  of  his  firm  is  not  willing  to 
spend  it  on  anything  of  doubtful  soundness. 
When  an  idea  is  right,  even  if  it  is  new,  when  its 
originator  knows  that  it  is  right  and  is  prepared 
to  fight  for  it,  there  is  no  difficulty  about  getting 
the  advertiser's  approval  unless  he  has  the  busi- 
ness stamina  of  a  jelly-fish. 

Of  course  every  man  is  his  own  favorite  author 
and  it  takes  a  pretty  broad-gauged  citizen  to  see 
that  another  viewpoint  or  style  may  be  quite  as 
good  as  his  own.  But  there  is  a  sound  reason  for 
an  advertiser  to  permit  the  best  to  remain  in  ad- 


The  Campaign  215 

vertising  copy  if  he  is  convinced  that  it  has  been 
conscientiously  prepared. 

That  reason  is  that  the  trained  writer  knows 
how  his  writing  will  sound  to  the  man  who  reads 
it  cold.  Training  in  writing  enables  a  man  to 
express  thought  to  another.  The  untrained 
writer  knows  perfectly  well  what  he  thinks,  but 
from  what  he  writes  an  outsider  has  no  way  of 
telling. 

Words  have  values  like  notes  in  music,  like 
colors  in  painting.  Training  shows  a  man  what 
values  are  transmitted  to  other  people. 

But  to  know  what  value  words  will  have  to 
other  people  means  that  you  must  also  know  what 
sort  of  people  you  are  addressing. 

Two  men  were  duck-shooting  —  one  a  sea- 
soned sportsman  and  the  other  out  for  his  first 
bird.  They  looked  up  and  saw  a  cloud  of  ducks 
above  them. 

''Help  yourself!"  the  veteran  said.  The 
novice  fired.     Not  a  feather  fluttered. 

"  How  in  the  world  could  I  miss  all  of  them?  " 
he  exclaimed. 

"  You  didn't  pick  your  duck,"  was  the  answer. 
"  You  fired  at  the  whole  flock." 

If  an  advertisement  is  to  contain  the  con- 


2i6  Making  Advertisements 

sumer's  viewpoint  it  must  be  made  with  a  knowl- 
edge of  the  consumer's  personality,  sex,  tastes, 
location  and  habits.  You  can't  sell  anything  to 
Canadians  by  showing  them  returning  soldiers 
wearing  American  uniforms. 

George  Ade,  who  is  a  master  in  narrowing 
down  a  whole  class  to  one  human  being,  starts 
one  of  his  Fables  like  this: 

"  The  owner  of  a  Furnishing  Store  gave  em- 
ployment to  a  Boy  with  Dreamy  Eyes,  who  took 
good  care  of  his  Nails  and  used  Scented  Soap 
and  carried  a  Pocket  Looking-Glass." 

The  maker  of  advertisements  reverses  the 
process.  A  fiction  writer  picks  out  the  qualities 
common  to  thousands  of  people  and  presents 
them  in  a  character  whom  every  one  recognizes. 
An  advertising  writer  thinks  of  a  person  who  is 
typical  of  a  class  and  addresses  him  so  pointedly 
that  the  message  reaches  out  and  touches  thou- 
sands of  other  people. 

One  of  the  most  vital  facts  for  an  advertising 
man  to  remember  is  that  he  must  never  let  him- 
self lose  the  consumer  viewpoint  which  he  had 
before  he  started  studying  a  product. 

Recently  an  advertising  man  carried  home 
some  proofs  of  a  campaign  on  rugs.     He  told 


The  Campaign  217 

his  wife  that  he  was  thinking  of  buying  two  or 
three  of  those  rugs  for  their  house.  She  read 
through  several  of  the  advertisements  and  then 
asked : 

'^  What  sizes  are  these  rugs  and  how  much  do 
they  cost?  "  Those  proofs  were  corrected  the 
next  day. 

Habit  or  traditions  may  lead  a  manufacturer 
to  omit  from  his  copy  some  of  the  most  important 
information.  Unless  the  advertising  man  is  very 
careful  he  will  find  himself  slipping  into  the 
sophisticated  attitude  of  the  manufacturer. 
The  more  conscientious  he  is  about  digging  into 
his  subject,  the  greater  is  his  danger. 

An  advertising  man  was  invited  to  talk  to  the 
vice-president  of  a  bank  about  his  institution's 
advertising.  They  had  several  talks  and  the 
plans  were  taking  shape. 

One  day  the  advertising  man  walked  into  the 
bank  with  a  very  fat  book  under  his  arm.  It  was 
an  exhaustive  reference  volume  on  the  methods 
and  practices  of  banking. 

"  What  on  earth  are  you  going  to  do  with 
that?  "  asked  the  banker. 

"  I'm  going  to  study  it/'  was  the  answer. 
"  Then  I  won't  have  to  ask  so  many  questions." 


2i8  Making  Advertisements 


''  Yes,  and  then  you  won't  be  any  better  off 
than  we  are,"  said  the  vice-president.  "  Ask  us 
all  the  questions  you  want  to.  But  don't  get 
smothered  in  technicalities.  We  want  you  to 
keep  on  thinking  like  a  depositor  —  not  like  a 
teller.'' 

So  the  book  was  never  read.  And  the  adver- 
tisements were. 


XI 

IDEAS    ON    IDEA   ADVERTISING 


XI 

IDEAS   ON    IDEA   ADVERTISING 

You  probably  have  a  favorite  morning  or  eve- 
ning newspaper  which  you  read  because  —  as 
you  occasionally  explain  to  some  one  —  it  has 
such  good  editorials. 

How  many  of  those  editorials  have  you  read 
this  week?  Unless  you  are  very  different  from 
most  people  you  mean  to  follow  the  editorial 
page  very  closely,  and  perhaps  you  think  you  do, 
but  the  fact  is  that  you  dip  into  it  only  occasion- 
ally. You  sample  it  now  and  then  just  to  see  that 
the  flavor  hasn't  changed.  But  the  days  on 
which  you  actually  read  it  through  column  after 
column  —  aren't  they  mighty  few? 

And  yet  in  every  newspaper  office  is  an  earnest 
group  of  conscientious  and  intelligent  gentle- 
men, searching  out  information,  weighing 
opinions,  polishing  sentences  which  eventually 
reach  a  mighty  small  fraction  of  that  newspa- 
per's readers. 

It's  not  the  fault  of  the  editorial  writers.  It's 
the  fault  of  the  newspaper's  composing  room. 


221 


222  Making  Advertisements 

Newspapers'  editorials  are  set  in  type  that  is  too 
small,  and  they  are  too  badly  displayed. 

There  is  an  editorial  writer  whose  utterances 
appear  in  a  chain  of  evening  papers  and  who  is 
credited  with  receiving  a  salary  of  $100,000  a 
year.  Yet  it  is  said  that  for  several  years  this 
man's  editorials  appeared  without  exciting  the 
slightest  comment.  It  was  not  until  they  were 
moved  to  the  back  page  and  set  in  type  two  sizes 
larger  than  the  type  in  the  adjoining  columns 
that  his  reputation  started  to  grow.  Then  peo- 
ple began  to  discover  the  art  in  his  simplicity,  the 
strength  of  his  words  of  one  syllable. 

Meanwhile  most  of  the  other  editorial  writers 
of  the  country  remain  anonymous  and  obscure  — 
not  because  many  of  them  may  not  have  so  much 
ability  as  this  man,  but  because  they  are  buried. 
It  is  as  if  an  orator  worked  himself  into  a  froth  of 
emotion,  threw  out  both  arms,  opened  his  mouth 
and  then  —  whispered. 

And  that  is  why  we  occasionally  see  the  voters 
of  a  city  or  a  state  or  the  whole  country  voting 
exactly  as  the  press  told  them  not  to  vote.  Com- 
pelling arguments  were  assembled,  the  logic  was 
irrefutable,  the  rhetoric  was  glorious  —  but  the 
editorials  simply  weren't  read. 


/  would  found  aft  institution  where  any  person 
•^can  find  instruction  in  any  subject  "—£yra  Comtll 

A  PiosEER  in  industry  was  Ezra  Cornell;  and  a  path- 
finder in  education  as  well  Hard-headed,  self-made, 
practical  old  man,  he  wanted  to  leave  his  money  where 
its  power  would  be  multiplied  through  the  centuries,  in 
the  lives  of  college-trained  men.  So  he  founded  Cdmell 
University  to  be  a  "producer  of  producers." 

As  a  university  it  was  the  pioneer  in  emphasizing  the 
importance  of  applied  science  in  the  life-training  ot 
m.en    It  was  th*  pioneer  in  being  wholly  non-scctariaa. 

It  is  pioneering  still  in  adopting  theunosual  coune  of  pre- 
senting, through  advertising,  its  gr:at  need  to  the  far 
sighted  business  menofAmerica,who  know  that  the  future 
of  every  important  enterprise  depends  npon  trained  men. 

1^0KNELL,witK  twice  as  many  students  as  her  endowment 
can  provide  for,  with  Professors  paid  less  than  many  skilled 
laborers,  must  somehow  be  helped  to  provide  those  rrien. 

She  must  have  ^10,000,000  if  she  is  to  goon. 

Producer  0/"  Producers! 

She  Mutt  go  00 1 


CORNELL 


This  jdTcrti?fm»nt,  the  fim  of  a  strict.  Is  piid  for  by  a 

friend  of  Co«NElL  Unhirsity  through  the 

Ntw  York  Ccrnill  Endowment 

COMMITTEE,  JI I  Fi/Ul  Ave. 


Cornell  was  sold  to  the  New  York  public,  as  well  as  to  its  own  alumni  body, 
by  Bruce  Barton  in  this,  the  first  paid  advertising  campaign  ever  used  by 
an  American  University. 


224  Making  Advertisements 

Therein  lies  one  of  advertising's  greatest  op- 
portunities for  development  in  the  next  ten  years 
—  the  development  of  advertising  to  influence 
public  opinion.  This  kind  of  advertising  is  as 
little  advanced  today  as  commercial  advertising 
was  twenty  years  ago. 

Yet,  after  all,  isn't  it  merely  an  extension  of 
principles  already  proved  in  advertising? 
Every  sort  of  advertising  influences  public 
opinion  and  changes  habits  of  mind.  Advertis- 
ing has  changed  American  habits  of  eating,  of 
dressing,  of  amusementj  of  building  and  furnish- 
ing homes.  Why  shouldn't  it  change  habits  of 
thinking? 

Roughly  this  kind  of  advertising  up  to  the 
present  time  can  be  divided  into  two  classes  — 
that  which  is  in  the  public  interest,  like  the  war 
campaigns  about  food  and  welfare  work  and 
more  recently  the  church  campaigns;  and  that 
which  is  in  the  private  interest  of  corporate 
bodies,  like  the  campaigns  of  the  traction  com- 
panies for  higher  fares,  or  the  information  sup- 
plied by  the  packers  about  their  profits,  or  the 
telephone  company's  efifort  to  reduce  useless 
calls. 

It  seems  that  thus  far  the  campaigns  in  the 


Ideas  on  Idea  Advertising  225 


public    interest    have    been    more    successfully 
handled  than  the  efforts  of  private  concerns. 

No  better  full-page  advertisements  were  ever 
prepared  than  some  of  those  sent  back  from 
France  by  the  staff  of  The  Stars  and  Stripes  for 
one  of  the  Liberty  Loans.  Early  in  the  war  the 
advertising  profession  was  organized  under  Wil- 
liam H.  Johns  as  chairman  of  the  Advertising 
Division  of  the  Committee  of  Public  Informa- 
tion, and  the  business  principles  which  had  been 
selling  biscuits  and  shoes  and  dictating  machines 
were  put  to  work  to  bui-ld  ships  and  catch  spies 
and  raise  funds. 

Even  in  political  advertising  there  have  been 
flashes  of  intelligence,  though  for  the  most  part 
the  advertising  of  issues  and  candidates  has  in- 
dicated too  little  knowledge  of  the  difference 
between  editorial  writing  and  advertising  writ- 
ing, too  much  hurry  and  too  much  self-glorifi- 
cation. 

Perhaps  political  advertising  originated  in  a 
day  when  the  political  party  subsidized  the  pa- 
per which  favored  it.  Believing  that  it  might 
as  well  get  something  for  its  money,  or  perhaps 
to  make  the  campaign  records  look  better,  the 
party  took  some  space  and  made  a  splurge. 


226  Making  Advertisements 

It  didn't  matter  much  what  went  in  that  space. 
That  has  been  the  great  trouble  with  political  ad- 
vertising. It  has  been  turned  over  to  an  al- 
ready over-worked  press  agent  who  threw  to- 
gether anything  that  occurred  to  him  at  the  last 
moment.  It  was  hurriedly  set  by  the  newspaper 
and  appeared  on  the  following  morning  with 
about  twice  as  much  in  it  as  anybody  could  pos- 
sibly read. 

It's  been  only  recently  that  politicians  have 
realized  that  advertising  can  help  them  sell  their 
arguments.  They  wouldn't  think  of  sending  out 
a  stuttering  campaign  speaker.  They  know  that 
training  is  needed  to  take  the  stump.  Now  they 
are  seeing  that  the  same  training  that  sells  mer- 
chandise can  sell  ideas;  and  that  those  ideas  can 
be  political  ideas  as  well  as  business  ideas. 

If  advertising  space  is  used  by  candidates  for 
the  simple,  convincing  presentation  of  their  talk- 
ing points,  instead  of  for  mud-slinging,  it  can 
create  a  favorable  impression  of  a  personality 
just  as  it  creates  a  favorable  impression  of  a 
brand  of  merchandise. 

The  trouble  with  much  of  the  good-will  ad- 
vertising done  by  the  corporations  seems  to  be 
three-fold:  It  waits  until  the  eleventh  hour  be- 


Ideas  on  Idea  Advertising  227 


fore  it  appeals  to  the  public;  it  has  an  apologetic 
tone,  and  it  sounds  too  selfish. 

There  are  conspicuous  exceptions,  the  most 
frequently  quoted  being  the  long  and  consistent 
campaign  of  the  American  Telephone  and  Tele- 
graph Company. 

Years  ago  this  company  started  telling  the 
public  about  the  telephone,  and  today,  even  in 
the  tangles  of  readjustment  to  a  peace-time  basis, 
the  public  has  a  great  fund  of  patience  and  kind- 
liness for  the  crippled  service.  In  this  advertis- 
ing there  was  no  idea  of  waiting  until  adverse 
legislation  seemed  imminent.  One  interesting, 
broad-visioned  view  of  the  telephone's  service 
to  the  country  has  followed  another.  With  a 
background  like  this  it  is  not  necessary  to  cringe 
with  an  apology  when  an  emergency  arises. 

The  day  before  the  Brooklyn  street-car  strike 
began  the  telephone  people,  anticipating  the 
number  of  Freds  who  would  have  to  phone  the 
Helens  that  they  couldn't  get  home  for  dinner, 
asked  the  public  not  to  rush  to  the  phones.  Im- 
mediately after  a  munitions  explosion  in  New 
Jersey  the  telephone  company  devoted  its  space 
to  telling  that  the  lines  were  blocked  by  curiosity- 
calls  put  in  by  people  who  simply  wanted  to 


228  Making  Advertisements 

know  what  had  happened.  As  a  result,  the  work 
of  calling  doctors  and  nurses  was  delayed.  The 
telephone  company  simply  told  the  facts.  The 
public's  good  will  toward  the  company  dispelled 
any  idea  of  resentment.  The  right  idea  of  the 
company  had  been  started  years  before. 

The  other  day  a  group  of  men  were  discussing 
the  latent  possibilities  in  the  idea  of  a  non-parti- 
san, publicly  controlled  advertising  bureau  to  in- 
fluence public  opinion  on  all  sorts  of  subjects.  It 
could  check  unwise  tendencies,  big  and  little. 
It  could  sow  constructive  ideas  in  millions  of 
minds  every  day. 

Suppose  this  public  advertising  bureau  started 
with  business  manners.  It  could  make  people 
stop  having  their  operators  call  other  people  on 
the  phone  and  hold  them  until  the  man  who 
started  the  call  gets  ready  to  talk.  It  could 
abolish  the  use  of  the  word  conference. 

"  Sorry,  but  Mr.  Jenkins  is  in  a  conference," 
says  his  secretary.  The  fiction  still  persists  in 
spite  of  the  general  knowledge  that  Mr.  Jen- 
kins's conference  usually  consists  of  telling  his 
assistant  that  he  made  the  eleventh  hole  in  three 
yesterday. 

It  could  make  everybody  keep  to  the  right  on 


^n  Advert isement  by 
The  Pullman  Company 


Courtesy,  '"  '^^  '"^-i^- 

•^  duction  tothe 
book  of  instruction  for  Pullman 
employes  occurs  the  phrase:  "The 
most  important  feature  to  be  ob- 
served at  all  times  is  to  satisfy  and  please  passengers, 
and  again,  "the  reputation  of  the  service  depends  as 
much  upon  the  efficiency  of  employes  as  upon  the 
facilities  provided  by  the  Company  for  the  comfort 
of  its  patrons." 

Such  personal  service  cannot  be  instantly  developed;  it 
can  be  achieved  only  through  years  of  experience  and  the 
close  personal  study  of  the  wide  range  of  requirements  of 
twenty-six  million  passengers. 

To  retain  in  the  Pullman  service  experienced  car  em- 
ployes of  high  personal  qualifications, pensions  are  provided 
for  the  years  that  follow  their  retirement  from  active  service, 
provision  is  afforded  for  sick  relief  assistance  and  increases  in 
pay  are  given  at  regular  intervals  with  respect  to  the  num- 
ber of  years  of  continuous  and  satisfactory  employment. 

A  further  inducement  in  which  civility  and  courtesy  axe 
counted  of  great  importance,  is  the  award  of  an  extra  month's 
pay  each  year  for  an  unblemished  record.  As  a  result,  a 
large  percentage  of  Pullman  conductors  and  porters  are 
qualified  by  many  years  of  experience  to  render  passengers 
the  highest  type  of  personal  service. 


An  advertisement  may  be  used  to  sell  nothing  hut  service.  Joseph  Hus- 
band of  Husband  Iff  Thomas  has  made  us  all  forget  that  we  ever  met  an  auto- 
cratic Pullman  conductor  or  that  the  porter  achieves  a  complete  reversal  of 
form  just  before  tipping-time. 


Ideas  on  Idea  Advertising  229 


stairways  and  on  sidewalks.  It  could  abolish 
speeding  on  our  streets,  just  as  intelligent  adver- 
tising of  Safety  First  has  minimized  the  number 
of  factory  accidents.  It  could  wipe  out  the  hat- 
checking  nuisance  and  washroom  tipping. 

It  could  go  right  into  people's  homes  and  give 
husbands  and  wives  something  to  talk  about  in 
the  evenings.  There  would  be  a  lot  less  unhap- 
piness  if  advertising  showed  the  tired  business 
man  how  uninteresting  he  is  to  his  wife  and  if  it 
showed  her  what  obstacles  he  overcomes  every 
day,  how  many  cranky  people  he  meets,  what 
disappointments  he  has  to  face  and  keep  on  smil- 
ing. 

Think  how  it  could  develop  and  encourage 
the  reading  of  books.  Think  how  interest  in 
good  plays,  even  the  civic  drama,  could  be  de- 
veloped. Think  how  the  question  of  personal 
hygiene  could  be  presented  as  it  never  was  before 
except  in  the  Government's  educational  cam- 
paign to  soldiers. 

Now  in  all  this  is  one  underlying  idea.  It  is 
to  give  a  person  the  other  fellow's  viewpoint. 
Most  people  are  good  people  when  you  get  to 
know  them.  You  have  probably  had  the  ex- 
perience of  disliking  a  man  intensely  the  first 


230  Making  Advertisements 

time  you  met  him.  After  you  got  acquainted, 
after  you  found  out  what  difficulties  he  had  to 
overcome,  how  sincerely  he  was  trying  to  do  his 
best,  you  probably  forgot  your  dislike  and  began 
to  admire  him.  Unless  a  man  makes  friends 
very  easily  he  is  constantly  revising  his  opinions 
of  his  fellow  men. 

The  purpose  of  advertising  to  influence  public 
opinion  is  to  give  people  the  other  man's  view- 
point. 

Most  of  the  work  of  this  sort  has  been  done  by 
publicity  men  through  the  news  columns.  Idea 
advertising  is  still  at  the  stage  where  business 
men  used  to  be  willing  to  pay  anything  for  a  free 
write-up  in  their  local  paper. 

There  seems  to  be  a  feeling  that  motives  will 
be  suspected  if  the  advertising  columns  are  used. 
People  who  want  to  sell  ideas  are  still  apt  to  pre- 
fer to  be  anonymous  —  to  make  it  appear  that 
the  newspaper  is  sponsor  for  the  thought.  That 
has  two  obvious  disadvantages.  First,  the  re- 
action is  always  adverse  when  the  real  sponsor  is 
discovered.  And  second,  propaganda  in  the 
news  isn't  seen  by  as  many  people,  isn't  as  efifect- 
ively  presented  and  doesn't  tell  a  person  that  he 
is  expected  to  do  something  about  it.    A  press 


Ideas  on  Idea  Advertising  231 

bureau  sends  you  a  clipping  about  yourself  from 
your  morning  paper.  Mounted  on  a  slip  it  looks 
quite  impressive.  You  wonder  why  you  didn't 
see  it.  The  reason  you  didn't  see  it  was  because  a 
good  advertisement  in  the  next  column  com- 
pletely overshadowed  it.  After  a  man's  name 
appears  in  the  papers  he  is  always  surprised  that 
more  people  don't  speak  to  him  about  it.  They 
just  didn't  see  it. 

Suppose  that  all  the  tools  employed  in  selling 
merchandise  were  employed  in  selling  ideas. 
Suppose  that  the  business  men  of  the  East  told 
their  story  to  the  farmers  of  the  West  and  that 
the  farmers  reciprocated.  There  could  be  no 
civil  strife  in  a  country  where  a  perfect  mutual 
understanding  was  promoted  by  an  exchange  of 
temperate,  sound,  convincing,  sincere  advertis- 
ing copy. 

Think  what  this  country  could  do  if  it  sold 
itself  as  a  nation  to  Mexico  and  to  Japan.  Those 
countries  are  full  of  people  who,  like  us,  are  try- 
ing to  buy  food,  raiment  and  shelter  for  their 
families.  Our  problems  differ  only  in  the  de- 
tails. 

You  remember  that  Mark  Twain  said  that 
everybody  talks  about  the  weather  and  nobody 


232  Making  Advertisements 

does  anything  about  it.  That  is  exactly  the  pub- 
lic attitude  toward  the  self-centred  radicalism 
that  made  Russia  the  grimmest  joke  of  the  cen- 
turies, that  makes  the  front  page  of  our  papers 
look  like  a  convention  of  walking  delegates. 

This  country  is  composed  of  people  who  act 
sensibly  when  they  are  informed.  The  masses 
of  the  people  have  never  been  told  in  simple, 
direct  language  about  the  problems  of  capital. 
An  American  who  was  in  Russia  when  the 
monarchy  was  overthrown  says  that  peasants  and 
soldiers  came  up  to  him  on  the  street  to  examine 
his  hands.  If  the  nails  were  clean  they  called 
him  an  aristocrat.  Conceptions  no  less  ridicu- 
lous are  circulated  about  men  of  means  today 
and  the  men  of  means  aren't  telling  how  ridicu- 
lous it  is.  The  masses  have  never  been  shown 
clearly  where  all  this  turmoil  will  lead  them  and 
their  children  unless  it  is  stopped. 

A  kettle  boils  at  the  bottom  first.  Heat  has 
never  been  applied  to  the  radical  kettle  where  it 
will  count. 

There  are  two  stories  to  be  told  to  this  country 
and  advertising,  and  only  advertising,  can  tell 
them.  One  consists  of  a  few  plain  home  truths 
about  economics  and  the  way  it  affects  Bert  and 


Ideas  on  Idea  Advertising  233 


Mike  and  Tessie  just  as  much  as  it  does  their 
bosses.  The  other  consists  of  a  vivid  picture  of 
the  misery,  pestilence  and  death  that  the  wild  red 
thing  brings  with  it. 

With  those  two  ideas  sold  to  the  public  of  all 
incomes  in  short,  continuous  advertisements, 
well-illustrated  and  well-displayed,  nothing  can 
happen  to  this  country. 

Such  a  campaign  would  be  not  in  the  interests 
of  any  class  or  group,  not  even  in  the  interests  of 
the  Government,  in  the  sense  of  the  party  now  in 
power.  It  would  be  in  the  interests  of  just  one 
thing — the  American  form  of  government 
which,  with  all  its  faults,  looks  mighty  good  to 
Americans  after  the  past  four  years. 


XII 

WHERE    IS    ADVERTISING    GOING? 


XII 
WHERE    IS    ADVERTISING    GOING? 

John  Plainfield  sits  down  in  front  of  the  fire 
after  breakfast  on  Sunday  morning  and  lights 
his  pipe  and  opens  his  paper.  He  is  an  ideal 
prospect  for  the  shirt  sale  advertisement  on  page 
sixteen.  He  has  the  money,  the  discrimination, 
and  he  is  open-minded  about  shirts.  But  just 
as  he  reaches  page  fourteen  his  wife  calls  down: 

"  John,  dear,  won't  you  see  what's  the  matter 
with  the  back  door?  It  won't  latch."  And 
John,  like  the  dutiful  husband  he  is,  goes  to  fix 
the  door. 

And  he  never  returns  to  that  section  of  the  pa- 
per. And  all  the  thought,  time,  energy  and 
money  put  into  that  shirt  sale  advertisement  is 
wasted  so  far  as  John  is  concerned. 

If  there  are  enough  Johns  who  are  fond  of 
their  wives  and  enough  broken  back  doors  that 
Sunday  morning,  only  one  thing  can  happen. 
The  advertising  manager  will  send  for  his  assist- 
ants on  Monday  morning  and  say: 

237 


238  Making  Advertisements 

"  Our  copy  for  that  shirt  sale  was  rotten." 
Whereas  the  copy  may  have  been  superb  and  the 
real  fault  may  have  been  in  advertising  to  the 
Johns  on  Sunday,  when  they  are  subject  to  dis- 
tracting assignments  of  work  from  the  Janes. 

Jane  Plainfield,  the  following  Tuesday  after- 
noon, settles  down  comfortably  with  the  newest 
issue  of  her  favorite  fiction  magazine  and  a  box 
of  chocolates.  It  being  a  rainy  afternoon  she 
decides  to  finish  both  of  them. 

On  page  287  is  an  advertisement  of  a  new 
vacuum  cleaner  and  Jane  is  so  sure  that  she  needs 
one  that  she  has  put  it  on  her  shopping  list  for 
tomorrow.  But  just  as  she  reaches  page  285  the 
door-bell  rings  and  here  are  Helen  and  Mabel 
with  their  knitting  and  an  earnest  desire  for  con- 
versation. 

So  Jane  never  sees  page  287  and  tomorrow  she 
goes  to  town  and  buys  the  vacuum  cleaner  which 
the  salesman  wants  to  sell  her  instead  of  the  one 
which  the  advertiser  on  page  287  wanted  her  to 
buy.  And  if  enough  of  these  rainy  afternoons 
are  interrupted  by  calling  knitters,  the  adver- 
tising manager  of  the  vacuum  cleaner  company 
will  show  his  agent  the  record  of  inquiries  from 
Mrs.  Plainfield's  favorite  magazine  and  will  say 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  239 

sadly:  '^  I'm  afraid  you  folks  aren't  giving  our 
stufif  enough  punch." 

It's  exactly  like  golf.  So  many  things  in  life 
are  like  golf.  You  may  practise  your  follow- 
through  half  a  dozen  times  until  you  know  ab- 
solutely that  your  club  head  goes  out  straight 
ahead  in  the  direction  of  the  green.  And  then 
you  hit  the  ball  and  because  you  turned  your 
wrist  a  shade  too  much  or  moved  your  body 
ahead  of  your  swing  or  looked  up  or  made  one  of 
a  dozen  other  mistakes,  the  ball  bounces  along 
the  ground  —  topped!  And  you  blame  your 
follow-through,  whereas  the  trouble  was  with 
your  feet  or  your  head  or  your  eyes  or  your  tim- 
ing. 

The  psychologists  tell  us  that  experiments 
show  that  a  cat's  digestive  organs  go  on  strike 
when  a  dog  enters  the  room.  If  fear  has  that 
efifect  on  a  cat,  think  what  anger,  envy,  jealousy, 
hunger,  poverty,  laughter,  ambition  and  any 
other  sensation  can  have  on  a  human  being;  and 
on  advertising. 

A  flesh-and-blood  salesman  can  draw  away 
when  he  sees  that  his  prospect  is  not  in  an  ap- 
proachable mood.  And  he  approaches  only 
those  who  are  apt  to  buy.     But  a  printed  sales- 


240  Making  Advertisements 

man,  an  advertisement,  blunders  right  ahead  and 
goes  after  the  sale  of  nursing  bottles  to  old  bache- 
lors, adding  machines  to  debutantes,  perfumes 
to  bellboys,  condensed  milk  to  financiers,  fishing 
tackle  to  dear  old  ladies  and  so  on  —  all  because 
people,  thus  far,  read  each  other's  magazines 
and  do  not  permit  themselves  to  be  card-indexed 
according  to  sex,  age,  taste  and  income. 

So  you  find  men  commenting  on  advertise- 
ments in  magazines  intended  only  for  the  eyes  of 
their  wives  and  failing  to  see  advertisements 
in  business  men's  magazines.  And  you  hear 
women  describing  products  advertised  to  their 
husbands.  People  simply  don't  behave  accord- 
ing to  specifications. 

When  advertising  can  drop  all  human  beings 
into  their  proper  filing  envelopes  and  can  ar- 
range to  be  seen  only  under  the  most  auspicious 
circumstances,  then  copy  will  have  its  true  test. 

Meanwhile  progress  is  being  made.  An  ad- 
vertisement does  its  best  to  select  its  own  audi- 
ence by  its  looks.  Just  the  appearance  of  an  ad- 
vertisement will  attract  some  people  and  repel 
others.  If  the  right  ones  are  attracted  and  the 
wrong  ones  are  repelled,  or  left  neutral,  a  good 
start  has  been  made.    Advertisers  know  this  and 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  241 

practice  it.  The  same  piece  of  copy  would  not 
be  inserted  in  the  Ladies'  Home  Journal  and, 
say,  the  Police  Gazette.  But  too  often  the  dif- 
ference between  audiences  is  not  sufficiently  ap- 
preciated. And  one  of  the  most  wholesome 
trends  of  advertising  is  to  adapt  the  looks  and 
sound  of  an  advertisement  to  the  type  of  person 
who  is  believed  to  dominate  the  medium's  circu- 
lation. 

The  readers  of  some  magazines  seem  to  have 
formed  the  habit  of  sending  for  booklets.  The 
readers  of  other  magazines  very  rarely  write  for 
anything.  If  the  same  advertisement  is  ad- 
dressed to  both  audiences,  it  is  wrong  in  one  case 
or  the  other.  One  direction  in  which  advertis- 
ing is  going  is  toward  greater  appropriateness 
of  appeal.  Special  copy  is  being  prepared  for 
each  audience.  The  good  old  days  of  slamming 
the  same  piece  of  copy  into  magazines  entering, 
respectively,  the  front  and  back  door  of  a  house 
is  fortunately  passing.  An  advertiser  may  want 
the  good  will  of  both  car  owners  and  chauffeurs, 
but  he  talks  to  each  man  in  his  own  language. 

One  of  the  editors  of  a  metropolitan  news- 
paper was  talking  about  his  plans  for  reorgani- 
zation. 


242  Making  Advertisements 

"  We  have  some  good  actors  here,"  he  said. 
"  We  have  some  good  scenery  and  the  music  is 
all  right  and  the  libretto  is  fair.  But  Goodness 
knows  we  haven't  a  show!'' 

In  the  advertising  business  we  have  some  ex- 
cellent fundamentals.  We  have  many  trust- 
worthy practises  and  a  growing  set  of  proved 
truths  and  an  accumulating  code  of  ethics.  But 
Goodness  knows  we  haven't  a  science. 

It's  too  young,  this  business  of  advertising,  to 
be  classed  as  a  science.  It  covers  the  whole 
range  of  human  emotions  and  is  subject  to  every 
whim  and  caprice  of  human  nature. 

Advertising  men  are  still  alive  —  very  much 
alive,  some  of  them  —  who  can  remember  a  time 
when  the  present  ideas  of  agency  service  were 
unknown.  And  yet,  young  as  advertising  is, 
those  who  have  been  working  with  it  as  it  has 
progressed  are  apt  to  take  for  granted  too  much 
knowledge  of  it  on  the  part  of  the  public.  Much 
as  it  affects  their  lives,  people  haven't  yet  ac- 
cepted many  of  the  most  commonplace  phases 
of  advertising. 

At  a  dinner  party  the  other  evening  a  woman 
of  broad  general  tastes  expressed  herself  very 
forcibly  on  the  subject  of  carrying  over  fiction 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  243 

into  the  advertising  pages.  To  advertising  men 
this  discussion  is  a  very  old  story.  Half  a  dozen 
years  ago  there  were  vigorous  discussions  on  both 
sides.  Many  advertisers  favored  the  carry-over 
method  and  many  remained  loyal  to  the  solid  ad- 
vertising section.  Both  principles  have  shown 
that  they  can  make  advertising  pay.  And  yet 
here  was  this  magazine  reader  opening  up  the 
subject  as  if  it  never  had  been  mentioned  before. 
She  didn't  like  to  hunt  through  the  advertising 
pages  for  the  continuation  of  her  stories  and  she 
thought  the  practise  ought  to  be  stopped,  and 
that  was  all  there  was  to  it! 

A  couple  across  the  table  chimed  in  to  say  that 
they  didn't  mind  having  their  fiction  split  by  ad- 
vertisements, but  what  they  disliked  was  seeing 
billboards  along  a  railroad.  There  ought  to  be 
a  law,  they  thought,  to  give  the  man  uninter- 
rupted view  of  the  Jersey  marshes.  Here,  too, 
the  subject  was  approached  in  the  manner  of 
pioneers. 

The  other  day  there  was  a  very  interesting  ar- 
ticle in  Printer  s  Ink  about  baths.  Do  people 
really  take  a  bath  every  day?  Apparently  a 
great  share  of  our  countrymen  do  not.  One 
thing  or  another  seems  to  interfere.     If  that  is 


244  Making  Advertisements 

true,  why  should  the  soap  manufacturers  con- 
cern themselves  with  advancing  arguments  for 
this  brand  of  soap  or  that  when  what  seems  to  be 
needed  is  an  educational  campaign  for  just  soap? 
How  many  men  put  on  a  clean  shirt  and  a  clean 
collar  every  day?  How  many  men  are  careful 
about  keeping  their  shoes  polished? 

In  a  word,  there  are  scores  of  fundamentals 
about  human  habits  toward  advertising  and  ad- 
vertised products  which  most  advertisers  are  too 
busy  to  consider.  And  why  go  after  the  market 
in  the  interior  of  South  America  when  there  are 
a  dozen  markets  twice  as  big  on  your  own  door- 
step? 

In  a  single  issue  of  a  newspaper  you  will  find 
advertisers  in  many  stages  of  development.  The 
keen,  well-displayed,  thoughtful  advertisement 
of  the  seasoned  manufacturer  appears  beside  the 
old-fashioned  "  card  "  of  the  firm  that  remains 
backward.  The  long-pull  advertisement  of  the 
firm  that  is  building  character  over  a  period  of 
years,  the  house  that  regards  advertising  as  an 
investment  and  treats  its  appropriation  as  good- 
will insurance,  is  seen  near  the  ofifer  of  the  retail 
store  which  expects  action  within  a  few  hours. 

A  retailer  can  think  of  his  advertising  budget 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  245 


in  terms  of  weeks.  He  knows  from  experience 
that  if  he  spends  $5,000  this  week  he  will  turn 
over  a  greater  stock  so  much  more  rapidly  than 
he  would  without  advertising  that  he  will  get 
from  the  public  his  money  to  pay  for  his  adver- 
tising before  his  bills  are  due. 

An  institutional  advertiser  has  no  such  imme- 
diate evidence  of  his  advertising's  power.  He 
must  have  faith  sometimes  for  years  until  some 
day  a  test  comes  and  he  finds  that  his  investment 
has  rolled  up  for  him  a  mass  of  good  will  behind 
his  trademark  which  can  be  destroyed  by  neither 
disaster  nor  competition. 

The  time  has  come  when  the  man  who  employs 
one  of  these  methods  is  studying  the  methods  of 
the  other  and  each  is  gaining  something  from 
the  work  that  the  other  has  done.  The  kind  of 
advertising  that  Butterick  has  been  doing  will 
help  to  educate  people  to  the  fundamentals  of  ad- 
vertising itself.  More  campaigns  explaining 
the  elementary  principles  of  advertising  may  be 
expected,  and  their  value  can  scarcely  be  over- 
estimated. 

With  a  closer  scrutiny  of  values  in  advertising 
has  come  a  loosening  of  the  grip  held  on  business 
by   personal   salesmanship.      A   mediocre   idea 


246  Making  Advertisements 

brilliantly  presented  may  seem  plausible  and 
even  promising  when  the  presentation  is  made 
by  a  dominating  salesman,  but  when  it  goes  be- 
fore the  public  without  the  benefit  of  its  spon- 
sor's eloquence  the  promise  is  rarely  fulfilled. 
And  when  this  has  been  repeated  a  few  times  the 
advertiser  thinks  more  of  his  dollars  than  he  does 
of  the  charm  of  an  eloquent  salesman.  With  the 
disappearance  of  superlatives  from  copy  has 
come  a  demand  for  quiet  convincing  argument 
with  something  more  behind  it  than  a  heavy  fist 
accustomed  to  rough  work  on  mahogany  desk 
tops. 

Magazines  which  cannot  measure  up  on  net 
paid  circulation  and  net  cost  per  subscription  do 
not  attract  the  advertising  that  used  to  be  started 
in  their  direction  at  the  cocktail  hour.  The 
great  little  entertainer  is  not  nearly  so  entertain- 
ing as  a  good  A.  B.  C.  report. 

With  a  better  understanding  will  come  more 
intelligent  use  of  advertising  in  lines  of  business 
where  growth  seems  to  have  been  stunted.  When 
the  banks  discovered  that  they  could  advertise 
their  services  without  loss  of  dignity,  a  new  day 
began  for  financial  institutions  and  the  hardest 
blow  in  history  was  struck  at  the  get-rich-quick 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  247 

promoters.  For  advertising  meant  the  public's 
increased  interest  in  the  handling  of  money,  and 
with  greater  interest  has  come  more  knowledge 
and  protection  against  skilful  snares. 

One  of  the  best  New  York  agencies  specializ- 
ing in  financial  accounts  has  watched  the  signs 
of  the  times  and  is  equipping  itself  to  sell  bonds 
and  banking  service  just  as  bread  and  spark 
plugs  are  sold.  It  used  to  regard  the  prepara- 
tion of  advertising  copy  as  something  confined 
to  the  up-town  agencies,  but  now  it  is  employing 
only  writers  who  have  had  general  experience  in 
advertising  merchandise. 

When  great  industrial  houses,  such  as  makers 
of  factory  machinery  and  equipment,  learned 
that  they  could  afiford  to  reach  through  general 
advertising  the  young  executives  of  today  who 
would  be  the  chief  executives  of  tomorrow,  they 
proved  the  value  of  a  new  application  of  adver- 
tising. 

Yet  there  are  whole  industries  which  are  still 
in  the  doldrums.  Many  of  them  continue  year 
after  year  to  make  the  same  mistake:  they  use 
their  advertising  to  talk  about  what  they  sell  in- 
stead of  talking  about  what  their  products  can 
do  for  the  people  whom  they  want  to  reach. 


248  Making  Advertisements 

The  book  publishers  are  a  capital  example. 
The  opportunity  of  the  book  publishers  lies  in 
selling  reading,  not  books,  to  the  people.  As  a 
nation,  we  have  lost  the  art  of  reading.  One  of 
the  leading  booksellers  of  the  country  said  the 
other  day  that  he  estimated  the  number  of  book 
purchasers  —  consistent  book  purchasers  —  in 
this  country  at  200,000.  Think  of  it!  Out  of 
110,000,000  less  than  one  fifth  of  one  per  cent 
have  the  reading  habit. 

The  reason  is  very  easy  to  find.  Reading  has 
been  crowded  out  of  the  public's  attention  by 
the  many  other  kinds  of  entertainment  and 
amusement  that  are  constantly  thrust  forward. 
The  movies,  the  cheaper  magazines  —  and,  of 
course,  it  is  assumed  that  the  good  magazines  are 
included  as  much  as  books  when  one  speaks  of 
reading —  and  most  of  all  the  newspapers,  have 
taken  the  place  filled  in  a  more  deliberate  gener- 
ation by  good  books. 

Reading,  with  the  mass  of  people  in  large 
cities,  has  become  a  matter  of  hurriedly  glancing 
at  morning  newspaper  headlines,  and  picking 
up  and  throwing  down  the  editions  of  evening 
papers  which  begin  to  appear  right  after  break- 
fast.    On  the  ride  home  at  night  another  eve- 


Does  Anyone  ever  get 
"  too  miicK^  Sleep 


THE  encrpy  you  can  aHord 
to  spend  today  i«  jint 
what  you  (torcd  up  last  night 
in  iletp— and  b»  m»r$. 

What  you  iitcd  for  deep, 
•ound,  restful  sleep  is  a  quiet, 
■teady  bed — a  bed  that  in- 
cites every  dcpt  and  muscle 
(o  T4Ux: 

Thouunds  of  people  arc 
finding  in  Simmons  Beds 
deep,  quiet  sleep  for  the  first 
time  to  their  lives. 


THE  ammonf  Met^  Bed 
is  n»utttii. 

K  Simmons  Spring  is  al- 
ways resilient  and  restful— 
Dpver  tags  or  bumps. 

That  i$  why  people  aleep 
(o  much  better  in  a  Sim- 
mons Bed  and  Spring  than  in 
a  wooden  bed  or  ordinary 
metal  bed. 

And  that  is  why  Sin^;Ix»n« 
Company  i>  spedalizing  ia 


Tvin  "BtJt.  One  sleeper 
docs  not  disturb  (he  other, 
or  communicate  colds  and 
other  infcctioru. 

With  the  addition  of  Mat- 
tresses to  their  well-known 
Metal  Beds  and  Springs,  the 
Simmons  line  is  the  most 
fO^\zrcempliiiilttpingiqutp- 
men!  in  America  today— ^/l 
/or  tlttp. 

Sold  in  the  stores  of  lead- 
ing mcrchaou  all  over  the 
country. 

Your  choice  of  ver^  beau- 
tiful dcsigru  in  Enameled 
Steel  and  Lacquered  Brass — 
at  prices  little  if  anj  higher 
than  for  ordinary  beds. 

And  when  yoa  are  select- 
ing your  Simmons  Beds  with 
an  eye  to  their  appearance  in 
the  room,  you  will  sec  that 
Simmons  has  for  the  first 
time  established  beautiful  and 
SMiheriuiive  design  in  Metal 
Beds. 

Wkti 


Ltijint  Miiical  JvirmmU  nU  Huitk  Mtttximn  StJ 
Siftrtti  BtJt  tnj  SmaJ  SUtf.' '     Fm  if  ihsrft. 

SIMMONS  COMPANY 

mZAaSTB     ATLA!<TA      EENOSBA     SMS  nuNCBCO     VtSCtt&L 


The  "WINDSOR" 

No.  4369—01  Twin  Pair 

l^r  <J  Summons'  rxf^>-tr*d«  BrsaaTaUitf* 
«f  k«avy  t—tu  roionnf  (/cc^ogi  tnm  4tnum^, 
fr««  urxKfik  tad  n^i^ij. 

Cs^vuiictr  fiaisb«d  ia  Lac^ntf. 

Hu  ik«  S'matemfMitmti  pta-4  kkI  M/>» 
Lu  Ctmtr  tutti.     Eur  roJUac  caaan, 

Y<>»  ck<>r<  o<  Tw.n  Pat  aad  DsiiMi  Wi4U 


Built  for  Sleep 


How  muck  stronger  it  was  for  the  Simmons  Company  to  sell  Sleep  than 
to  use  its  space  to  harp  on  those  three  old  stand-bys  —  materials,  workman- 
ship and  price! 


250  Making  Advertisements 

ning  paper  is  scanned  as  the  train  or  car  lurches 
around  corners.  Even  if  sustained  newspaper 
reading  is  done,  what  does  the  reader  get? 

For  the  past  few  months  six  out  of  seven  front 
page  columns  have  been  given  over  to  industrial 
unrest.  It's  not  the  fault  of  the  newspapers. 
The  reds  and  the  strikers  have  made  the  news. 
The  newspapers  have  printed  it.  They  can't 
print  stories  about  factories  where  contented 
workers  are  steadily  keeping  at  the  jobs.  That 
is  not  news.  How  would  it  look  if  you  saw  on 
your  front  page  a  headline  reading,  "  Perfect 
Contentment  Reigns  in  Bridgeport  Factories!" 

The  newspaper  reader  would  say  "  Huh!  what 
of  it?  "  He  wants  thrills,  battle,  murder  and 
sudden  death. 

Only  a  newspaper  with  features  of  the  maga- 
zine type  or  with  a  brilliant  editorial  page  can 
give  a  reader  more  than  a  reflection  of  the  un- 
common things  done  by  common  people  or  the 
common  things  done  by  uncommon  people. 
Uncommon  people  do  so  few  uncommon  things. 
And  the  common  things  done  by  common  people 
are  not  news. 

And  right  there  lies  the  duty  of  the  book  pub- 
lisher.    There  are  probably  90,000,000  Ameri- 


Where  is  Advertising  Going?  251 

cans  who  don't  want  strikes.  But  they  are  not  so 
vocal  as  those  who  do.  The  result  is  that  the 
small  minority  monopolizes  our  front  pages. 
Why  should  labor  agitators  start  papers  of  their 
own?  They  have  appropriated  the  self-respect- 
ing press  by  virtue  of  the  news  that  they  create. 

Book  publishers  have  been  trying  to  sell  books, 
and  almost  without  exception  they  will  tell  you 
that  their  experience  has  not  been  satisfactory. 
They  have  been  setting  aside  five  hundred  dol- 
lars or  five  thousand  or  fifteen  thousand  for  the 
advertising  of  this  book  or  that  one. 

Then  they  take  small  space,  prominently  dis- 
play the  author^s  name  if  he  is  popular  or  the 
book's  name  if  he  isn't,  add  a  sentence  or  two 
quoted  from  favorable  book  reviews  and  call  it 
an  advertisement. 

What  earthly  difiference  does  it  make  whether 
the  Philadelphia  Ledger  says,  "  Rattling  good 
yarn,"  or  the  Rochester  Democrat  declares, 
*^  No  finer  piece  of  work  has  come  from  Miss 
Killkenny's  pen  "  ? 

Would  your  wife  buy  a  new  soup  if  she  knew 
nothing  about  it  except  the  looks  of  the  container 
and  if  some  soup  critic  merely  said,  '^  Very  tasty, 
indeed ''  ? 


252  Making  Advertisements 

Not  on  your  trade-marked  success!  She  buys 
the  new  soup  because  the  soupmaker  sells  appe- 
tite. Husband  will  smack  his  lips  when  he 
tramps  in  on  a  frosty  winter  night  and  finds  a 
spicy  plate  of  soup  smoking-hot  on  the  dinner 
table. 

How  have  the  player-piano  people  and  the 
phonograph  people  put  their  products  into  the 
amazing  number  of  homes  in  which  you  find 
them  today?  By  selling  mahogany  cases  la- 
belled with  the  maker's  name?  Not  much!  By 
selling  music. 

The  book  publishers  must  go  behind  the  offer- 
ing stage  —  and  sell.  They  must  create  a  want 
of  which  the  public  isn't  conscious  and  then  fill 
it. 

How?  Well,  here  are  some  random  sugges- 
tions. 

The  sales  methods  applied  to  business  books 
are  a  conspicuous  exception.  They  are  sold  by 
making  a  man  realize  that  there  is  something 
lacking  in  his  equipment  —  something  which  a 
course  of  training  can  supply. 

In  only  one  or  two  instances  is  culture  sold  as 
business  training  is  sold  today.  Do  you  ever  get 
tired    of    the    conversation    in    your    circle    of 


Where  is  Advertising  Going?  253 


friends?  What  is  talked  about?  Suppose  you 
live  in  the  suburbs.  After  you  have  covered  the 
children  and  the  new  people  in  the  community, 
how  much  money  So-and-So  is  making,  what 
scores  you  all  make  at  golf,  what  new  car  you 
are  going  to  buy,  how  the  tax  rate  and  the  cost 
of  living  are  going  up,  the  new  plays,  the  world's 
series,  who  has  had  trouble  about  maids,  your 
garden,  the  dinner  where  somebody  was  very 
amusing,  and  the  change  in  the  time-tables  — 
what  else  is  left?  It  varies  in  different  com- 
munities, but  the  range  is  not  apt  to  be  greater. 
Run  it  up  and  down  the  social  scale  and  only 
the  subjects  will  change.  The  people  who  talk 
or  think  about  things  more  important  than  these 
are  hard  to  find. 

Suppose  more  publishers  did  as  only  one  or  two 
are  doing  now  —  the  one  or  two  who  are  selling 
culture  by  mail-order  advertising,  where  results 
are  closely  checked  and  every  piece  of  copy  must 
pay.  Suppose  they  sold  reading  as  a  force  in 
national  life,  a  force  for  culture  and  breadth  of 
vision  and  information.  How  well  informed 
are  most  people  now  when  they  toss  off  an 
opinion  on  a  really  vital  issue  and  toss  it  off  with 
as  much  assurance  as  if  they  had  really  dug  out 


254  Making  Advertisements 

the  facts?  Suppose  the  publishers  stuck  to  it 
until  they  made  a  real  dent  in  the  conventional 
habit  of  letting  somebody  else  do  the  thinking. 
Suppose  it  actually  became  fashionable  to  know 
instead  of  to  guess,  and  to  know  about  something 
worth  while  instead  of  restricting  one's  store  of 
facts  to  a  superficial  knowledge  of  things  that  do 
not  matter  a  continental.  Could  people,  in  the 
mass,  be  swayed  this  way  and  that  as  readily  as 
they  are  today? 

Or,  again,  suppose  the  publishers  sold  the  joy 
of  a  crackling  open  fire,  a  wing  arm  chair,  a 
fragrant  pipe,  a  shaded  light — and  a  Stevenson 
novel.  Suppose  Dickens  were  brought  out 
afresh  at  the  holidays  and  the  charm  and  laugh- 
ter and  quaintness  of  English  inns  and  stage- 
coach days  were  put  in  place  of  Freddy  Rasp- 
bury's  latest  appeal  to  sex. 

Why  should  the  publishers  feel  that  new 
books,  however  poor,  must  always  be  brought 
out  to  supersede  old  books,  however  good?  If 
a  book  is  sound  and  true  and  fine,  why  stop  ad- 
vertising it  as  soon  as  only  5,000  people  have 
bought  it  when  perhaps  50,000  would  buy  it  if 
they  got  around  to  hearing  about  it? 

When  you  go  into  a  book  shop  today  you 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  255 


probably  get  a  flash  of  recognition  as  you  name 
the  book  you  want,  for  the  people  you  meet  in 
bookshops  rank  high  in  education  and  intelli- 
gence; but  almost  always  the  clerk  returns  with 
your  book  and  asks:  ''  Is  there  anything  else?" 

As  a  useful  public  service,  why  shouldn't  the 
purchaser  be  interested  in  another  book?  Good 
books  on  worth  while  subjects  are  being  written 
constantly.  The  publishers  say  they  don't  sell. 
Why  on  earth  should  they?  Nobody  hears 
about  them  unless  a  friend  happens  to  speak 
about  one  or  unless  he  happens  to  run  across  a 
review  which  really  says  something  —  not  the 
blurbs  used  in  publishers'  advertising  but  the 
inviting  descriptions  which  sometimes  creep  into 
the  book  pages,  especially  when  Heywood 
Broun's  name  is  at  the  top  of  the  column. 

Buying  a  book  is  an  effort  for  most  people. 
Why  doesn't  some  bookseller  make  it  easy? 
Why  doesn't  some  bookseller  ask  his  regular 
customers  to  let  him  send  them  one  good  book 
every  month?  If  they  didn't  like  the  looks  of 
what  he  sent,  the  books  could  be  returned.  The 
houses  selling  books  by  mail  find  that  a  mighty 
small  share  of  sets  sent  on  approval  are  ever  re- 
turned.    People  keep  them  and  pay  for  them. 


256  Making  Advertisements 

Suppose  the  men  and  women  in  book-shops 
studied  the  types  of  their  customers  and  men- 
tally classified  each  person  as  he  approached. 
After  his  wants  were  supplied  suppose  the  clerk 
used  the  methods  that  are  employed  by  sales- 
people in  the  best  of  the  Fifth  Avenue  shops 
where  jewelry  and  furs  and  other  luxuries  are 
sold.  A  man  goes  into  one  of  those  shops  intend- 
ing to  have  his  watch  regulated  or  to  have  a  rip 
in  his  fur  coat  sewed  up  and  he  comes  out  with 
a  platinum  dinner  ring  for  his  wife  or  a  scarf 
and  muff  for  his  daughter.  The  trouble  is  that 
books  are  sold  like  necessities.  They  are:  but 
they  ought  to  be  sold  like  luxuries  —  persua- 
sively. 

There  is  enough  good  sound  common  sense 
and  valuable  information  on  the  bookshelves  of 
any  American  city  to  knock  the  menace  of  radi- 
calism into  a  cocked  hat.  But  it  is  a  secret 
among  book  publishers. 

Strangely  enough,  magazines  and  newspaper 
publishers  as  a  class  are  almost  as  backward. 
There  are  a  few  shining  exceptions  —  publishers 
who  have  built  and  are  continuing  to  build  sound 
reputations,  a  constant  following  among  readers, 
and  a  sustained  patronage  from  advertisers;  but 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  257 

you  can  count  them  on  the  fingers  of  both  hands 
without  using  your  thumbs. 

Most  publishers  of  periodicals  know  a  lot 
about  advertising.  They  teach  their  own  repre- 
sentatives to  go  out  and  sell  space  constructively 
to  the  manufacturers  of  the  country.  And  this 
knowledge  leads  them,  at  stated  intervals,  to 
draw  up  and  consider  some  very  workmanlike 
advertising  plans.  But  when  it  comes  to  putting 
into  practise  the  ideas  which  they  habitually  lay 
before  manufacturers  —  ideas  which  they  know 
to  be  successful  if  they  read  their  own  advertis- 
ing pages  —  they  pause  on  the  brink,  shudder, 
and  decide  that  the  water  is  too  cold. 

Publishers  are  not  alone  in  backwardness. 
There  are  other  industries  which  might  be  de- 
scribed. The  reason  that  publishers  are  men- 
tioned is  that  they  are  so  close  to  advertising 
that  they  ought  to  know  it  better,  and  their  op- 
portunity is  so  obviously  worth  while. 

The  increased  use  of  some  commodities  might 
have  debatable  value  to  the  country,  but  the  in- 
creased use  of  books  could  have  but  one  result. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  any  publisher  could  go 
very  far  alone.  The  great  need  is  for  a  broad, 
unselfish,  cooperative  campaign  as  intelligently 


2S8  Making  Advertisements 

planned  and  faithfully  executed  as  the  collective 
campaigns  of  the  citrous  fruit  growers  of  the 
West,  the  florists,  the  lumber  people  and  more 
recently  the  railway  executives,  the  canners  and 
—  yes,  the  churches  of  the  country. 

Advertising  in  the  next  few  years  will  see 
many  more  campaigns  of  common  interest  un- 
less all  the  signs  fail.  There  is  a  marked  tend- 
ency among  institutions  of  many  sorts  to  say: 

^'  Here  we  have  a  story  too  big  for  any  one  of 
us  to  tell  alone.  Anything  that  benefits  one  of 
us  will  benefit  us  all.  The  public  has  never  been 
told  what  barriers  we  have  surmounted,  what 
accomplishments  we  have  reached.  Let's  not 
boast;  let's  explain." 

There  is  much  to  be  said  for  the  collective 
campaign.  It  offers  an  opportunity  to  speak 
for  a  whole  industry  and  many  a  man  will  per- 
mit his  industry  to  describe  a  situation  of  which 
he  alone  would  hesitate  to  speak.  The  burden 
is  carried  on  many  shoulders  and  there  is  prog- 
ress without  individual  hardship. 

If  one  fruit  grower  were  to  spend  a  few  cents 
per  crate  in  single-handed  advertising,  he 
wouldn't  spread  his  story  far  beyond  his  own 
door-yard.     He  would  be  in  the  position  of  the 


Where  is  Advertising  Going?  259 


retailer    before    the    day    national    advertising 
helped  to  make  any  real  impression  upon  the 
public's  buying  habits.     But  several  thousand 
fruit  growers,  pooling  their  few  cents  per  crate, 
can  make  a  market.    And  the  opportunity  which 
has  been  realized  by  the  cooperative  few  will  be 
seized  in  coming  years  by  many  more  industries. 
The  other  day  some  advertising  men  were 
wondering  how  far  this  cooperative  trend  would 
go.     Why  should  it  be  limited  to  merchants  in 
one  line  of  business?     Some  one  recalled  a  time 
a  few  years  ago  when  a  pancake  flour  maker  and 
a  sirup  manufacturer  shared  the  same  billboard. 
That  led  to  the  suggestion  that  some  day  an  enter- 
prising agency  might  produce  a  triplet  cam- 
paign for  a  razor  manufacturer,  a  shaving  brush 
maker  and  a  shaving  soap  firm.     In  the  present 
campaigns  of  each  one  of  these  three  advertisers 
the  products  of  the  other  two  are  shown  —  un- 
labelled,  it  is  true,  but  shown  just  the  same  to 
help  tell  the  story.     Why  not  label  them? 

The  idea  suggests  interesting  possibilities. 
Why  shouldn't  a  man's  hat,  collar,  tie,  suit, 
gloves  and  shoes  be  advertised  in  one  advertise- 
ment—  each  one  a  trademarked  product  iden- 
tified instead  of  merely  helping  to  supply  the 


26o  Making  Advertisements 


background?  Think  of  an  automobile  adver- 
tisement with  everything  labelled  from  top  to 
tires. 

When  one  firm  makes  several  products  it  fre- 
quently advertises  two  or  more  in  the  same  piece 
of  copy.  Why  shouldn't  the  same  policy  be 
followed  when  the  products  are  made  by  differ- 
ent firms? 

Even  granting  that  an  equitable  division  of 
prominence,  satisfactory  to  both  or  all,  could  be 
obtained,  there  is  another  objection  which  is 
probably  responsible  for  the  absence  of  such 
advertising.  So  great  is  the  power  of  associa- 
tion of  ideas  through  advertising  that  an  adver- 
tiser will  be  loath  always  to  show  his  product 
with  one  certain  product  in  another  line  lest  the 
public  come  to  think  that  his  product  could  be 
used  with  that  one  and  no  other.  The  razor 
maker  wants  his  razor  used  with  all  manner  of 
brushes  and  shaving  soap.  Why  should  he  limit 
the  public's  conception  to  only  one?  And  there 
you  are. 

Yet  it  is  possible  that  this  fear  of  what  the 
public  might  think  may  follow  many  other  buga- 
boos which  have  been  sent  to  oblivion  in  recent 
years.     It  used  to  be  generally  believed  that  the 


Where  is  Advertising  Going  ?  261 


only  safe  way  for  a  manufacturer  to  tell  his  story 
was  to  get  a  newspaper  to  give  him  a  write-up. 
He  was  perfectly  willing  to  pay  a  press  agent  al- 
most anything  to  get  something  into  the  papers 
about  himself.  Today  the  use  of  free  publicity 
is  being  confined  more  and  more  to  telling  the 
legitimate  news  of  an  undertaking.  And  adver- 
tising is  being  used  when  a  firm  or  an  institution 
wants  to  go  squarely  before  the  public  with  an 
idea. 

Standards  of  advertising  judgment  are  becom- 
ing more  definitely  fixed.  With  the  increasing 
number  of  capable  men  who  are  devoting  them- 
selves to  typography  and  with  the  trend  of  good 
artists  toward  advertising  illustration,  it  is  in- 
evitable that  there  will  be  more  schools  of  com- 
mercial designing.  Reasons  for  arrangement 
will  be  better  understood  and  advertisers  will 
not  be  so  quick  to  say,  ''  I  don't  like  that;  I  don't 
know  why,  but  I  just  don't." 

A  little  knowledge  is  just  as  dangerous  in  the 
criticism  of  designs  as  it  is  in  the  criticism  of 
copy.  When  it  is  understood  that  there  is  a 
syntax  of  design  and  that  certain  rules  govern 
arrangement  and  that  these  rules  are  not  to  be 
violated  by  the  free-hand  use  of  shears  and  paste, 


262  Making  Advertisements 

much  will  have  been  accomplished  toward  clean- 
ing up  the  looks  of  the  advertising  pages. 

Already  the  advocates  of  deliberately  bad 
grammar  in  advertising  are  disappearing. 
There  was  a  brief  vogue  for  the  type  of  copy 
which  looked  as  if  it  had  been  clawed  out  of 
stone  by  some  one  with  his  naked  hands.  Its 
chief  enthusiasts  claimed  for  it  the  ring  of  sin- 
cerity, which  it  frequently  possessed.  But  that 
was  its  sole  virtue. 

''Never  mind  grammar — get  results!"  was 
the  exhortation  of  this  school  of  copy  writers. 

Every  writer  of  advertising  has  received  the 
condolences  of  his  friends  for  not  being  allowed 
to  write  what  he  really  wants  to  express.  Yet 
mighty  few  writers  of  advertising  can  say  that 
anybody  ever  told  them  not  to  write  so  well. 

Alexander  Woollcott,  dramatic  critic  of  the 
New  York  Times,  complains  that  people  often 
say  to  him :  ''  It  must  be  very  trying  not  to  be 
able  to  write  as  you  like  —  to  be  limited  by  the 
policy  of  your  paper."  It  annoys  him  because 
he  says  he  has  never  been  told  how  to  write  and 
he  is  writing  the  best  he  knows  how! 

Advertising  today  is  attracting  writers  of 
greater  ability  than  ever  before.     It  is  attracting 


Advertising  agents  have 
grown  with  advertising 


The  Philadelphia  bunuftcturef  who 
atert  apon  advertisin2  now  cao  do  to 
with  as  auurauce  of  success  neater 
tten  has  ever  before  been  possible. 

The  ploo«eriii£  has  been  done  for 
biffi. 

Yean  of  constant  activity  and  steady 
protest  liave  made  every  factor  in  ad- 
Wtisinft  more  effective,  mors  certain. 

The  leading  publications  today  opea 
up  a  more  intensive  market,  with  cir- 
culations tiiat  can  be  traced  and  meas- 
ured, with  an  influence  tliat  is  kaowo 
•nd  established. 

Readers  are  lending  a.  keentf  atteo- 
tkni:  to  the  advertising  pages. 

Merchants  realize  better  the  power 
t>f  advertising  and  are  swayed  by  it. 

Saleameo  Icnow  bow  to  grasp  it  and 
•PPly  it  to  their  own  selling  program. 

And  the  men  who  execute  advertis- 
lag— the  advertiiinA  ageats— are  more 
espable  than  ever. 

They  have  behind  them  years  of 
cspefieoce. 

A*  the  volume  and  the  importance 
of  advertising  liave  grown,  the  agents 
iiave  grown.  The  demands  it  has  made 
upoa  them  have  added  to  tlieir  e<luip« 
IDcat,  widened  tlieir  KOpe.. 


The  univertal  tpeeding-np  of  com- 
petition has  driven  home  to  them  A 
deeper  appreciation  of  what  mutt  be 
done  in  order  to  make  advertising  pay. 

They  have  teen  and  shared  in  the 
development  of  huge  selling  campaigns 
in  one  field  after  another.  They  have 
faced  new  problems  and  overcome  thaok 
with  sew  methods. 

Th^  have  trained  thcmselvee  to 
apply  to  one  industry  the  lessons  learned 
in  another.  They  have  concerned 
themseIv«snot  only  with  sales,  but  with 
every  department  of  the  modern  busi- 
ness organiaation. 

The  advertising  agent  therefore  JS 
today  in  a  better  position  than  ever  not 
only  to  fortify  against  mistakes  and 
eliminate  risk,  bur  to  render  practical, 
constructive  help  in  building  a  solid, 
permanent  structure  of  commercial 
success. 

There  >tre  In  Philadelphia,  as  in 
other  important  centers,  advertising 
agents  who  are  thus  skilled, add  through 
whom  the  Philadelphia  manufacturer 
may  command  the  accumulated  ex* 
perienceand  momentuxooi  t  geoeratioa 
of  advertiainft. 


THE  CURTIS  PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


n$  LaHt$' Oimt  Jomnd. 


n$  Saturday  BsttUna  Ptttt 


When  Richard  Walsh,  now  of  Barrows  ^  Richardson,  was  with  Curtis 
he  produced  a  lot  of  remarkable  copy  —  particularly  his  series  about  the 
place  of  Advertising  in  American  business.     This  was  one  of  that  series^ 


264  Making  Advertisements 

artists  of  high  technique.  It  is  producing  a  new- 
type  of  intellectual,  cultured  business  man. 

It  is  developing  organizations  with  the  spirit 
that  once  existed  in  newspaper  offices  of  the  tra- 
ditional sort  where  friendships  lasted  and  men 
felt  affection  for  the  desks  and  the  walls. 

There  is  pride  in  the  work  that  is  done  within 
these  organizations.  There  are  standards  that 
must  be  kept,  codes  that  must  be  observed  and 
reputations  that  must  be  built. 

It  has  been  proved  in  advertising  that  the 
agency  which  succeeds  is  the  one  which  devotes 
its  energies  to  producing  the  most  valuable  serv- 
ice for  its  customers.  If  profits  are  the  first 
consideration,  this  service  suffers.  If  the  service 
is  put  ahead  of  everything  else,  the  profits  take 
care  of  themselves.  Already  advertising  is  old 
enough  to  have  demonstrated  that. 

The  men  who  are  successfully  administering 
the  expenditure  of  millions  for  advertising  every 
year  see  that  very  clearly.  They  realize  what 
a  privilege  it  is  to  have  a  part  in  these  first  years 
of  advertising.  And  they  are  determined  that 
before  they  give  up  their  share  in  its  develop- 
ment it  will  be  that  most  thoroughly  American  of 
institutions  —  a  business  that  is  a  profession. 


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